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The EU’s incoming competition chief has signalled a new era in how Brussels polices dealmaking, promising the bloc’s merger rules will “evolve” to help European companies build scale to take on global rivals.
Teresa Ribera told the Financial Times she would take a “step by step” approach to reforms to clear away barriers to innovation and boost the EU’s flagging competitiveness against the US and China.
The Spanish socialist, who was previously deputy prime minister in Madrid, was this week nominated to take what is arguably the new European Commission’s most powerful policy portfolio, overseeing the green transition, economic competitiveness and the enforcement of the antitrust regime.
In her first interview since being picked for the role, she said Brussels should work on incentivising “industrial ecosystems” around products, such as the manufacturing of cars, to attract investment and better deploy the region’s limited capital towards a smooth green transition.
She also pointed to a potentially contentious shift in how the EU polices mergers and the emergence of companies that some leaders have dubbed “European champions”.
“There is a question of size at the international level . . . I think there may be a need to improve things,” Ribera said.
“In terms of what is the role to be played right now by this [competition] portfolio, of course, it is not exactly the same [as before], but something that needs to evolve and to adapt to the circumstances,” she added.
Ribera’s predecessor, the liberal Dane Margrethe Vestager, who ran the competition file for a decade, told the FT this week that Brussels should be wary of a wholesale reform of merger rules because it risked opening up a “Pandora’s box” and creating “ a lot of uncertainty”.
“Margarethe has done a great job and we need to see to what extent this great job needs to evolve . . . step by step,” Ribera said.
Ribera said she was in favour of cross-border opportunities when thinking about how to scale up European industry.
“We need to be a little bit more innovative in the way we build a well-functioning European single market where not only the national and the local interests find a place, but the national and local match the European interests,” she said. “This is going to be one of the challenges: how we can build this European understanding. Not only national champions, but the European understanding.”
Her comments come at a particularly sensitive time in Brussels where competition regulators are coming under political fire for holding back Europe’s top corporations.
At the same time, some capitals fear significant reform would give powerful member states, such as France and Germany, an opportunity to seize back power from the commission, the EU’s top competition authority, in an area where Brussels has proven its independence.
Ribera also faces the tough task of balancing the EU’s ambitious climate goals, aspirations to boost industry and pushback from capitals on the speed and cost of the green transition. Some of the EU’s centre-right governments are wary of Ribera’s stance on climate issues.
She said that reviewing the bloc’s state aid rules to potentially favour green investments was one way to satisfy both sides. “The [climate] targets do provide some signals on what we want to achieve, but we need to create the elements, the incentives and the confidence to do so and it depends on the cost of capital,” she said.
Former ECB president Mario Draghi said in a landmark report this month that the EU needed additional investments worth €800bn a year to fix its lagging competitiveness. Ribera declined to name her own assessment, but added: “What it’s clear is that the amount of capital that needs to be invested to accelerate this transition is so important that we had better not make mistakes.”
The 55-year-old also said she was open to understanding from member states what lessons could be learned from the fast-tracking and easing of state aid rules, particularly during the bloc’s energy crisis following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“If we take the right decisions, we will be creating fantastic opportunities,” she said. “If we delay those decisions, we may be killing the opportunities . . . we will have to face the consequences in the long run.”
Ribera, who was also minister for the ecological transition in Spain before her move to Brussels, has long been a powerful advocate for ambitious climate policy and was a key architect of the 2015 Paris climate accord.
Previously she has been vocal in her opposition to nuclear power, a stance that could bring her into conflict with pro-nuclear French and eastern European lawmakers in the European parliament where she will have to pass a hearing in order to take up the post.
Mellowing her earlier tone, she said it was not “yes or no” when asked whether she thought Brussels should support nuclear power investments.
EU capitals should decide which technologies they use to decarbonise, she said, but warned that “we should avoid killing the low-hanging fruit that may happen at a much faster speed”. Nuclear power plants are notoriously expensive and often take many years to build.