But since the letter came to light, some of the French companies it claims to speak on behalf of are backtracking. \u00a0<\/p>\n
The letter is a good summary of the discussion held at Evian,\u00a0said\u00a0BPIFrance,\u00a0the French public investment bank. But\u00a0its\u00a0CEO,\u00a0Nicolas Dufourcq, doesn\u2019t consider himself\u00a0bound by it, he told POLITICO in a written statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dufourcq said the letter was \u201cnot a big effort.\u201d Although\u00a0he was in Evian, he\u00a0did not see\u00a0it before it was published, and therefore\u00a0doesn\u2019t consider that he signed\u00a0it.<\/p>\n
The letter complained that the current European competition rules \u201coften hinder the formation of European champions\u201d and urged that, by the end of this year, the mandate of the European Commission\u2019s Competition Directorate be widened to consider strategic mergers in the context of the global market. It also demands that EU leaders get rid of EU rules on supply chain transparency.<\/p>\n
\u2018A little strong\u2019<\/p>\n
A representative from a second French company among the signatories said that the origin of the letter was \u201ca little nebulous\u201d and that they were not informed of the wording ahead of time. Granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter, they said that they did not disagree with the letter, but \u201cthe wording is a little strong.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even TotalEnergies, one of the two top signatories, has sought to clarify how the letter came about. Shortly after POLITICO reported on it, the company reached out directly to provide \u201cmore context.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But since the letter came to light, some of the French companies it claims to speak on behalf…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":508018,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[331,1395,2437,1442,6641,31,3677,32,53958,1305,5398,34,2000,299,36,1945,1824,4175,4582,806,1197,166276,28458,809,5111,48,6648,3695,479,7162,1201,11587,49],"class_list":{"0":"post-508017","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-banks","9":"tag-china","10":"tag-companies","11":"tag-competition","12":"tag-competitiveness","13":"tag-democracy","14":"tag-digital","15":"tag-donald-trump","16":"tag-due-diligence","17":"tag-electric-vehicles","18":"tag-emissions","19":"tag-emmanuel-macron","20":"tag-eu","21":"tag-europe","22":"tag-france","23":"tag-friedrich-merz","24":"tag-germany","25":"tag-greenhouse-gas-emissions","26":"tag-human-rights","27":"tag-industry","28":"tag-investment","29":"tag-marianne-gros","30":"tag-mergers","31":"tag-negotiations","32":"tag-parliament","33":"tag-rights","34":"tag-supply-chains","35":"tag-sustainability","36":"tag-tariffs","37":"tag-teresa-ribera","38":"tag-trade","39":"tag-transparency","40":"tag-united-states"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115392129658864778","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508017","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=508017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}