Austria: BWB publishes position paper on debate about European champions

In February 2019 the European Commission blocked the planned acquisition of Alstom by Siemens as the merger would have harmed competition. Soon afterwards the economy ministers of Germany and France published a manifesto for a European industrial policy. They are calling for EU merger control to be relaxed, by allowing the approval of potentially anti-competitive mergers in individual cases to enable the creation of European champions. The idea is that this would help maintain European competitiveness in the face of competition from China and other nations. Numerous academics, competition experts and company associations were critical of this call to relax EU merger control since it would not solve the problems of European companies on international markets. The BWB took this opportunity to examine the impact on the economy of Europe and Austria if EU merger control were to be relaxed and politicised.

Full Content: Federal Competition Authority

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