Brussels, 17/04/2015 (Agence Europe) - At the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington DC on 16 April (see EUROPE 11295), Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager defended her decision to send Google a statement of objections.
The Commissioner held talks in the US with Edith Ramirez, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, which has carried out its own investigation into Google.
Vestager said that she was indifferent to the nationality of the companies involved in competition investigations as her responsibility is ensuring that any company doing business in the EU respects the EU's rules, adding: “It is inevitable that cases involving Google - in Europe or in the States - attract the attention of the media, but I will not allow this to become a distraction. Our actions are based exclusively on the evidence before us and our rules.”
Vestager continued: “At the same time, since we enforce EU competition rules in the EU Single Market, the chances are that the companies that fall under our scrutiny are European.” She illustrated this with some figures: “For example, between 2010 and 2014 we adopted 30 cartel decisions involving 231 companies and imposed fines totalling €8.9 billion. Of these, 190 European companies received fines totalling €4.8 billion - just over half of the total - while 17 US-based companies received fines of €652 million - about 7% of the total.”
She is quoted by the Financial Times as saying she was confident in the EU's ability to demonstrate that Google had caused “damage” to consumers in the meaning of EU law.
Edward Black, head of a US technology trade association whose members include Google, quizzed the commissioner about her targeting of Google Shopping, a price comparison tool that he said only had a small share of the price comparison market. Mike Honda, a US congressman, told the Financial Times: “I'm concerned by the European Union's filing of antitrust charges against Google. Silicon Valley has produced some of the most innovative and life-changing technologies in human history.” (Elodie Lamer)