EU: “We are not trying to be superheroes” says Vestager

According to Politico, Margrethe Vestager hit back Thursday, January 25, against criticism that she was going overboard in trying to make markets fair, arguing that her investigators had no intention of behaving like “superheroes.”

“It’s not our job to rush around looking for people to rescue, getting involved in anything that looks unfair,” the powerful European commissioner for competition told a conference in Brussels.

Vestager on Wednesday handed down a billion-euro fine against US chipmaker Qualcomm for abusing a dominant position, and in the past few years she has meted out major penalties against firms ranging from Google to the Volkswagen Group. In her speeches she regularly riffs on the idea of fairness — much more so than her predecessors.

But the former Danish politician argued that her office was not guided by any misplaced or naive idealism. “Talking of fairness like that doesn’t make us Don Quixote,” she told the gathering, which was organized by the Global Competition Law Center.

Full Content: Politico

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