Joaquín Almunia amtiert wenige Monate als EU-Kommissar für Wettbewerbsfragen, schlüpft aber bereits in die Rolle des ewigen Mahners:
… allowing less efficient firms to be protected from effective competition – either through state measures or private arrangements – is a recipe for failure. I will not get tired of repeating this again and again.
So heute Morgen auf der 9. Jahrestagung der ICN in Istanbul. Dort auch eine
clear message: the crisis cannot be a justification for firms to protect their ‘home markets’ from more efficient ones, or to forego price competition, as this is detrimental to the whole economy … competition authorities must make sure that merger control is not used as a protectionist tool against transactions that do not raise competition issues.
Der rote Faden des Vortrags war aber die internationale Koordination and Integration der Kartellbehörden; klar, bei dem Forum. Ein Engpass, jedenfalls aus Sicht der Behörden, ist dabei der Bereich des Marktmachtmissbrauchs/”unilateral conduct”, wo im Verhältnis zwischen den USA und der EU die Gräben am tiefsten sind.
Hierzu kündigt Almunia an, dass die Europäische Kommission der Sache einen Stups geben wird:
there is a case for considering convergence on substantive antitrust issues such as “unilateral conduct”. The work done in the ICN Unilateral Conduct Working Group last year, examining different approaches to “abusive” refusals to deal, has been a step in this process. But we can further share our experiences in relation to other specific types of unilateral conduct, and their respective merits and drawbacks. I am therefore very pleased that my services in DG COMP will be organising the ICN Unilateral Conduct Workshop next December in Brussels – and I look forward to interesting and productive discussions on that topic.
Quelle: “Cooperation and convergence: competition policy in the 21st century”, ICN Annual Conference Istanbul, 27. April 2010.
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