Chillin'Competition

It’s official. As Nicolas anticipated last week, Joaquin Almunia will be the next Competition Commissioner.

Mr. Almunia is surely one of Spain’s most able politicians. He has earned wide recognition all throughout Europe because of his handling of the economic crisis as the Commissioner in charge of Economic Affairs, and he is also a well respected political figure at the national level despite many years under the spotlight (at 34 he was the youngest Minister of the first Gonzalez government; he held Ministerial offices for 9 years; later on he became the leader of the socialist party and ran for Prime Minister in 2000). By now his CV has widely circulated elsewhere, so there’s no point in insisting on that.

Apparently some are concerned about the fact that a socialist and former trade unionist will be taking over the Competition portfolio. In my view, at this point in time such concerns lack any basis, the consensus on the role of undistorted competition being widespread in both aisles of the political spectrum. Moreover, there is evidence of Commissioner Almunia’s longstanding commitment with strong and independent competition law enforcement.

Indeed, the fact that Mr. Almunia ran for Prime Minister against Aznar in 2000, means that his profile and policies were very carefully scrutinized at the time. Interviews, documents and press clips of the 2000 campaign provide nowadays very interesting information about his views on different issues. Not only do we know that he’s an opera fan and a supporter of Athletic de Bilbao (not doing bad so far this season), but, more interestingly, a review of those materials tells us that the promotion and defense of competition ranked, even then, at the top of his political priorities.

During the electoral campaign, then candidate Almunia explicitly distanced himself from the attitude towards public intervention prevailing in other Member States governed by socialist parties. He proposed to accelerate liberalization of the electricity, gas and telephone markets, and advocated for continuing the process of privatizations. He further affirmed that his policies defended ‘free competition, free market and the battle against oligopolies’ more than anyone else’s.

Such affirmations seemed not to be mere ‘lip service’, the urgent adoption of a new Competition Act being one the the top 10 priorities in his political program for the general elections (something quite unusual in Spanish politics).

Finally, l will recall one interesting episode, now almost forgotten, but which, at the time, received ample media attention:

At the end of February 2000, Mr. Almunia was speaking before an audience of businessmen about his economic program, and insisted on the necessity to grant the Competition Authority (then Tribunal de Defensa de la Competencia) greater powers enabling it to ‘act independently, without waiting for the Government to take the initiative’. At that moment, he was interrupted by the President of the employers association (late Jose Maria Cuevas, a very influential figure back then), who manifested its disbelief:

‘I start to doubt that not even you believe you will be elected Prime Minister because the last thing that anyone who wants to govern would do would be to grant more powers to the Tribunal de Defensa de la Competencia (…) If you really want to govern tell us what the f&%k you plan on doing with the Competition Authority’.

Almunia’s response:

‘I find it surprising that you want a Tribunal de Defensa de la Competencia kneeled before the government (…) That would introduce skepticism where there should be illusion’.

In sum, a decade ago Mr. Almunia stood up for independency in competition enforcement and made competition one of his political priorities. This record and his experience at the EU level make him, in theory, one of the best Competition Commissioners we could be hoping for. We wish him and his team the best of lucks.

BTW, while searching for info on this topic I found out that the news about appointment made its way into a website on ‘celebrity news, all the time’ under the heading ‘Antitrust Gossip’ (!) Is competition law getting glamorous??

(Image possibly subject to copyrights: source here)