Security and technology, the EU studies softer antitrust rules

What is the balance between responses to economic crises and the rules of healthy competition? The debate, which has been going on for several years now at European level, is about to lead to a revision of the guidelines on mergers between companies.

The European Commission seems set to present a revision in the coming weeks that will relax the antitrust rules that have so far restricted large merger transactions. The memory, to cite one of the best known examples, goes back to the decision in 2019 to block the merger of Germany's Siemens with France's Alstom. For many it was a plastic example of Europe's inability to create champions capable of competing with large Chinese groups, subsidised often by the state, and American leaders dominating the most technologically advanced markets.

The crisis triggered first by the pandemic and then by the conflict in Ukraine, the tensions in the Middle East and, most recently, the crisis in the Persian Gulf triggered by the US attack on Iran have given fresh impetus to the advocates of a restyling of the antitrust rules in the name of the strategic security of the European economy. The European Union started a reflection, with public consultation, as early as May a year ago and is expected to arrive at a synthesis in the coming weeks. The European Commissioner for Competition, Teresa Ribera, has anticipated the intention to write guidelines that, when examining mergers, take more account of factors such as the impact on innovation and the benefits that the transaction may bring in terms of environmental sustainability.

This is, in a way, the thinking of the supporters of large national champions, seen as an antidote to dependence on non-EU suppliers in strategic value chains, from which, for example, autonomy for energy needs and for the supply of key components of the digital industry derives. But these objectives can collide with the needs of competition, where not well tempered. All the main competition authorities in the major European countries are calling for balance. Even the Italian Antitrust Authority, in its annual report just presented to Parliament, has raised the issue. According to this thesis, it is right that, in the light of major crises, competition policy should keep abreast of the times, opening up to dialogue with the requirements of economic security, strategic autonomy and sustainability, but this cannot be achieved by an excessive relaxation of antitrust constraints on merger control. One of the indirect effects could be an increase in final prices, for example. While the creation of large national champions can no longer be postponed, in other words, their costs should be well calculated.