European Commission merger control: combining competition and the creation of larger European firms

Mark Thatcher

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: The article examines the European Commission's use of its legal powers over mergers. It discusses and tests two views. One is that the 'neoliberal' Commission has ended previous industrial policies of aiding 'national champion' firms to grow through mergers and instead pursues a 'merger-constraining' policy of vigorously using its legal powers to block mergers. The other is that the Commission follows an 'integrationist policy' of seeking the development of larger European firms to deepen economic integration. It examines Commission decisions under the 1989 EC Merger Regulation between 1990 and 2009. It selects three major sectors that are 'likely' for the 'merger-constraining' view - banking, energy and telecommunications - and analyses a dataset of almost 600 Commission decisions and then individual merger cases. It finds that the Commission has approved almost all mergers, including by former 'national champion' firms. There have been only two prohibitions over 20 years in the three sectors and the outcome has been the creation of larger European firms through mergers. It explains how the Commission can pursue an integrationist policy through the application of competition processes and criteria. The wider implication is that the Commission can combine competition policy with achieving the 'industrial policy' aim of aiding the development of larger European firms.

Keywords: European Commission; mergers; national champions; neoliberalism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-11-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-com and nep-eur
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published in European Journal of Political Research, 10, November, 2014, 53(3), pp. 443-464. ISSN: 0304-4130

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/54743/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:54743

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager (lseresearchonline@lse.ac.uk).