With a new Commission in the offing, the EU’s two biggest economies are making their move to change the antitrust rulebook.
“We need to review the current European competition rules” to check if they can allow “consortia and consolidation in key sectors” such as mobile networks or airspace “in order to strengthen European resilience,” the two governments said in a statement laying out what they think the next European Commission needs to do in the next five years to boost European growth.
Germany’s Lufthansa is currently facing EU opposition over its plan to take a stake in Italian airline ITA.
Both governments have also pushed to be able to hand more cash over to favored firms, successfully lobbying for more room to help companies overcome a series of economic shocks, from Covid-19 to energy price spikes, despite worries from smaller nations.
They want “further improvement in the state aid framework” to bolster private investments and an existing industrial policy subsidy tool “in order to provide a targeted support to companies in their transition process, in the most strategic industrial sectors and in highly innovative technologies, thus creating space for European companies to become globally competitive.”
That should be part of a wider effort to reduce Europe’s reliance on trade partners and “make Europe a global leader” in net-zero technologies, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, space and aeronautics, biotechnologies, robotics, mobility and chemicals, ministers said after a meeting during French President Emmanuel Macron’s state visit to Germany.
