The European Commission has rejected a charge that “virtually all mergers” between large corporations in the European Union are approved.
The accusation was levelled at senior Eurocrats in the wake of their giving the go-ahead to a merger deal between video-games giants Microsoft and Activision Blizzard, prompting fears the deal could foster monopoly-like conditions in the EU.
In a written question submitted to the EC, Portuguese left-wing MEPs Marisa Matias and José Gusmão accused the EU of approving “almost every merger that crosses its desk”.
“The Commission’s own data reveals that the EU blocked just 30 – or a meagre 0.37 per cent – of the 8,083 mergers proposed between 1990 and 2021,” the duo wrote.
“The Commission approves virtually all mergers, while professing to combat monopolies,” they added, also pointing out that the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority was still examining the merger regarding its potentially negative impact.
The suggestion that the EC has been going soft on business interests was rejected by the body’s Executive Vice-President for digital affairs Margrethe Vestager.
While admitting that most mergers are given the green light, Vestager insisted that many of those approvals were only granted after concessions were given to the EU.
“A prohibition is only one way of preventing problematic transactions,” she said.
“Another way to resolve competition concerns is for the parties to submit remedies,” she added.
“If the remedies fully address the competition concerns, the Commission conditionally approves the merger.”
Vestager also tried to justify the numbers with reference to some of the failed mergers that have occurred since 1990, arguing that many such agreements between companies are abandoned once they attract the attention of government authorities.
