EU competition policy - Priorities for the next political cycle

Overview

Well-functioning competition rules play a fundamental role in the internal market, both in terms of limiting distortions and ensuring efficiency and innovation by allowing competitors to enter new markets and protecting consumer choice. Consistent and effective application of EU competition rules in accordance with relevant fundamental rights and procedural safeguards is essential for the integrity of the single market; it provides protection and legal certainty. Furthermore, EU competition policy is one of the few areas where the EU has extra-territorial teeth.

EU competition policy should ensure that effective competition between companies exists. As such it contributes to efficient markets, investments, and innovation, necessary to develop market-based sustainable solutions and technologies to contribute to the green and digital transition. It should address the global challenges which businesses are facing to boost their and the EU’s overall competitiveness. As such, it is one of the key components of a successful EU industrial policy and we support assessing whether EU competition policy is fit to respond to the challenges the EU is currently facing as part of the current debates on competitiveness and as stressed in the reports from Enrico Letta and Mario Draghi and also the Mission Letters of the Commission President.

For the forthcoming EU political cycle, BusinessEurope has 3 overarching priorities in the field of Competition:

• Ensure effective and independent competition law enforcement preserving legal certainty, a level playing field in the internal market and non-discrimination.
• Ensure that the administrative and procedural framework of EU competition proceedings is sufficiently speedy, transparent, and proportionate.
• Ensure that EU competition policy and enforcement works together with other jurisdictions, converges towards common objectives and defines markets in a realistic and dynamic way.