The European Union’s antitrust chief has rejected proposals to ease merger regulations aimed at helping the bloc build corporate champions capable of competing with US and Chinese giants.
“It is not necessary to relax them,” Teresa Ribera told Bloomberg.
“If anyone thought that this call for the creation of champions was an argument to deregulate, dismantle or reduce safeguards, they are mistaken. That cannot be and it makes no sense; we would be killing the goose that lays the golden eggs,” she said.
“It is necessary to interpret reality — and if relaxing means tolerating abuses, the answer is obviously no,” the socialist EU commissioner said in an interview in Barcelona on Friday.
Ribera’s position underscores a divergence with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who has cited former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi’s 2024 competitiveness report as a roadmap for reform, including overhauling merger review rules that critics say have hindered the emergence of strong European players in sectors such as telecommunications.
Ribera’s remarks come as the EU’s executive arm readies new guidelines on mergers and acquisitions that could be published as early as next month, part of the bloc’s most sweeping competition policy review in two decades amid mounting concerns about lagging behind the US and China.
She rejected the notion of reducing markets to “one or two operators,” where competition drives innovation, breakthroughs, lower prices and consumer benefits, merely to create “the appearance of having a single European champion.”
Ribera noted that “in many cases” consolidation is being advocated in sectors that lack a truly integrated market, operating instead across 27 separate national markets.
“Let’s integrate the market,” she said, even if that means confronting national resistance.
She added that a key focus of the upcoming guidelines will be to reinforce the early engagement stage — the preliminary review of proposed mergers or acquisitions, to prevent cases from becoming drawn-out proceedings in Brussels.
