Chillin'Competition

In past decades, the Commission repeatedly insisted on the importance of competition policy for the purposes of achieving the Single Market.

A few weeks ago, the Commission adopted a Communication entitled “Towards a Single Market Act – For a highly competitive social market economy“. Quite strikingly, the word “competition” appears only 9 times in this document.

Of course, this document is not competition law related. Yet, it seems to place only little emphasis on competition in general, not to talk of competition policy. This ought to be contrasted with the earlier Report of Mario Monti which referred 69 times to competition, and pleaded amongst other things in favour of:

“a new approach to industrial policy which builds on a mutually reinforcing relation with single market and competition rules“.

As a matter of fact, the concept of competition seems primarily quoted in relation to the international competition faced by EU businesses, and the need to foster the competitiveness of European firms.

A little disappointing.

Btw: Mario Monti’s report has gone relatively unnoticed in the competition law community, and this is extremely unfortunate.