Toespraak Eurocommissaris Kroes over de doelstellingen van het concurrentiebeleid (en)

SPEECH/08/152

Neelie Kroes

European Commissioner for Competition Policy

Competition policy objectives

Address to Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee of the European Parliament

Brussels, 26th March 2008

We are now two-thirds through the Commission's five year term.

The six months since our last meeting have seen further achievements for the Commission's competition policy, and we will continue this trend

I will be pro-active in implementing our policies up until the last day of the current Commission â€" I can assure you there will be no rest for me or DG Competition.

And for good reason. Our focus is not on ideology or theory â€" but on making the lives of Europe's citizens and businesses easier and more prosperous. Our efforts are making a real difference to hundreds of millions of lives.

To remind you briefly of the last six months and of current developments:

Antitrust

We have begun the Pharmaceutical sector inquiry - following the finalisation of the energy and financial services sector inquiries in 2007.

Pharmaceuticals are critical to consumers - European families spend 1,000 euros a year or more on them, and Governments spend billions; the sector faces major challenges to its business model in future years; and the majority of global pharmaceutical exports are from Europe.

We are working hard to ensure a continuous high output of innovative medicines, access to cheaper medicines for the consumer and a reduction of costs for national health budget. I look forward to bringing concrete findings back to future meetings of the committee.

Consumers are set to benefit from our decision in the MasterCard case, and the implementation of SEPA from 1 February;

You will no doubt also be aware that we brought Microsoft into compliance with our 2004 decision â€" a matter of quite some media attention;

Furthermore, we continued our anti-cartel fight with eight decisions adopted and EUR 3.3 billion in fines in 2007; in 2008, another decision has already been adopted and more are expected.

A settlements option in cartel cases should come into force later this year to complement our Leniency Notice system and free resources to pursue more cartels.

On the points about fines, let me say that I am about results and improved behaviours â€" not fines. But fines help to make it clear that anti-competitive practices are not tolerated here in Europe, so they remain an important weapon for us.

We are, naturally, working on more sophisticated tools in our Antitrust Damages White Paper. This will be launched in the coming weeks â€" and with your support it will be the next great policy advance for consumers. It will deliver a sensible means for justice when consumers have suffered â€" and I wish to make clear that I believe this is possible without the litigation excesses that have developed in the United States.

State aid

The final version of the General Block Exemption Regulation on state aid is also due to be adopted before end June 2008. Here we see again the importance of reducing red tape as the Regulation will deliver a simpler state aid system for all parties

Mergers

In the merger field, I should add also that predictability and transparency are very important for business and I am pleased to be able to say that there is now added certainty for business with new guidelines on how we intends to analyse non-horizontal mergers.

Let me now look a bit closer at another recent development in the energy sector.

As you may recall, we identified specific competition problems in our sector inquiry, which included high levels of market concentration and the possible abuse of generation assets by the main operators to raise prices.

When presenting the findings of our inquiry, I promised that I would continue to take further action under the competition rules to ensure that consumers benefit fully from the internal energy market.

And I have kept my word. Our actions have led to an important result in the past weeks in relation to E.ON, a major German energy company. We have actively been investigating whether E.ON raised electricity wholesale prices by inter alia withholding significant generation capacity and deterring investments by smaller competitors. We also had concerns that they used their network to favour their supply arm.

In order to settle these antitrust investigations, E.ON has proposed unprecedented remedies to remedy our concerns. Not only has E.ON proposed to divest more than one-fifth of its generation, but also to divest its transmission network subsidiary.

Let me be very clear; these remedies are directly related to our antitrust proceedings. They contribute to the Commission's goals of making the European energy market work better. Moreover, the unprecedented nature of the remedies demonstrates that our competition concerns were indeed serious and legitimate. And most importantly: this result demonstrates that our enforcement action makes a real difference. This is an important development for the benefit of all German consumers.

Needless to say that I will continue to pursue vigorously other pending cases in the electricity and gas sector.

So with that, thank you for the invitation to appear again before you as we continue the formal dialogue between our two institutions on the Annual Policy Strategy. This dialogue helps prepare the ground for the Commission's Legislative and Work Programme for next year. I therefore look forward to your input and ideas, and suggestions as to how we can improve our relationship in the final year of your committeeâ€Ös term.