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The European Commission sanctioned Google on Sept. 5, for abusing its dominant position in the bloc\u2019s advertising technology market. | Beata Zawrzel\/Getty Images<\/p>\nThe European Commission sanctioned Google on Sept. 5, for abusing its dominant position in the bloc\u2019s advertising technology market. | Beata Zawrzel\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Incidentally, European corporate leaders, who sometimes urge the Commission to be less rigorous in its enforcement of competition rules, should also keep these past cases in mind \u2014 especially if they want a more innovative and competitive European economy, as we all do. Perhaps they should put the issue into a broader perspective and think twice.<\/p>\n
With its Microsoft decision, the Commission \u2014 followed by several other competition authorities across the world \u2014 allowed for the emergence of Google and other start-ups to become hugely successful. In fact, it put pressure on Microsoft to change its behavior and embrace a corporate culture building on collaboration rather than monopolization, supporting open-source projects and fostering partnerships with other companies.<\/p>\n
And many analysts believe it is these changes, stimulated by the past determination of competition authorities, that help explain Microsoft\u2019s success over the last decade, under the leadership of CEO Satya Nadella.<\/p>\n
Against this backdrop, Trump\u2019s view that EU competition policy is driven by discriminatory motivations against U.S. companies is simply unfounded. What\u2019s true is that in any national or supranational context like the EU, institutions such as competition authorities and central banks have been set up in the eminent American tradition \u2014 dating back to the late 19th century (with the Sherman Anti-Trust Act<\/a> of 1890) and the early 20th century (with the Federal Reserve Act<\/a> of 1913) \u2014 precisely with the goal preventing these abuses, whether by companies in the marketplace or by governments abusing future generations via high inflation.<\/p>\n Of course, it\u2019s no surprise that leaders with an autocratic vision wouldn\u2019t feel at ease with institutions entrusted by governments and parliaments of the past with preventing power from becoming absolute. But it was the U.S. that set postwar Germany, and later the EU, on this track.<\/p>\n When occupying the country after World War II, America imposed the creation of two institutions on the newly born Federal Republic of Germany: First, the Deutsche Bundesbank \u2014 an independent central bank modeled on the Federal Reserve System, meant to avoid a repetition of the hyperinflation that contributed to the advent of Nazism. Second, the Bundeskartellamt competition authority, modeled on the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, with the power to prevent the reemergence of cartels and trusts in heavy industry \u2014 another factor that had contributed to Hitler\u2019s aggression and World War II.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The European Commission sanctioned Google on Sept. 5, for abusing its dominant position in the bloc\u2019s advertising technology…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":427758,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[7155,6725,2437,1442,24599,32,7335,6562,145929,108211,53,6717,49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-427757","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-antitrust","9":"tag-central-banks","10":"tag-companies","11":"tag-competition","12":"tag-competition-antitrust","13":"tag-donald-trump","14":"tag-eu-commission","15":"tag-eu27","16":"tag-mario-monti","17":"tag-online-advertising","18":"tag-technology","19":"tag-transatlantic-relations","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115211568704695816","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}