By Tom Fairless
LONDON--Europe's top competition official launched a robust
defense of her agency's independence on Thursday, denying
suggestions she has pursued political goals in targeting major
overseas companies including Apple Inc. and Google Inc.
Margrethe Vestager, who took over as the EU's antitrust chief in
November, rocked the business world in April by filing f ormal
charges against Google and Russian energy giant OAO Gazprom in the
same week for allegedly abusing their market power.
Both were highly sensitive moves against two of the world's
biggest and best-connected companies, from which her predecessor,
Joaquín Almunia, had held back for years.
Ms. Vestager's agency has also repeatedly deepened an
investigation into the tax practices of multinationals that has
embroiled major companies including Amazon.com Inc. and Starbucks
Corp.
Speaking on Thursday at Chatham House in London, Ms. Vestager
conceded that the decision to focus on specific sectors, such as
energy and information technology, was driven by political goals.
But she insisted she had approached individual cases fairly and in
strict accordance with the law.
"Some commentators have been quick to make political
inferences," Ms. Vestager said.
But "independence is simply nonnegotiable," she said.
The European Commission, the bloc's executive arm and top
antitrust authority, acts as prosecutor, judge and jury in EU
competition cases, giving it greater powers than U.S. antitrust
agencies, which must defend their cases before a judge.
Ms. Vestager said the current commission has consciously
prioritized antitrust cases where it believes its actions "would
have a multiplier effect with (its) wider political
priorities."
The Commission, led by former Luxembourg Premier Jean-Claude
Juncker, has announced a number of key objectives for its current
five-year term, including deepening the bloc's single market for
digital services and energy, and ensuring all companies pay their
fair share of tax.
"There should be no doubt that I will do my part to advise the
commission's broader objectives," Ms. Vestager said.
But to the question of whether EU competition policy is
politicized in individual cases, Ms. Vestager said the answer is "a
resounding no."
She stressed that her agency has to defend its decisions against
legal challenges in the EU courts in Luxembourg.
"We are committed to the principles of fairness, good
administration, transparency and good process," she said.
"There is simply no room to spare...for political
interference."
The commissioner also warned against new EU regulations that
could target large Internet companies like Google and Facebook
Inc., arguing that the bloc should seek first to enforce its
existing laws to keep big companies in check.
Senior EU officials in February floated a plan to create a new
EU-wide regulator for a swath of mainly US-based Internet
companies, amid concerns that some of these firms are obstructing
access to key online markets, according to an internal document
seen by The Wall Street Journal.
The EU has since said it would investigate how such companies
operate in Europe before deciding on any next steps, though the
bloc's German-born digital commissioner Günther Oettinger has
indicated that regulation is still on the table.
But Ms. Vestager said it would be "tricky" to design an EU
regulation targeting disparate Internet firms such as Facebook,
Amazon.com Inc. and eBay because it was hard to establish what they
had in common besides "facilitating something."
She stressed that her agency already has strong tools to tackle
abuses by large Internet companies. Besides filing formal antitrust
charges against Google in April over its search practices in
Europe, the EU has also opened an investigation into possible
barriers that some online companies may have created to
cross-border electronic commerce in Europe.
New regulations aimed at large Internet companies would take
years to create and would necessarily address past rather than
future problems, Ms. Vestager said.
"We need to think about what it is we want to achieve that can't
be achieved by enforcing competition law," she said.
Much of the behavior by Internet firms, she added, was "very
ordinary," and didn't require new tools to address.
"They want to make more money than their competitors, some want
a competitor not to be there," Ms. Vestager said.
Write to Tom Fairless at tom.fairless@wsj.com
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