Brussels, 05/06/2015 (Agence Europe) - Competition policy is essential for reaching two of the targets the European Commission has set itself, concludes the European Commission's annual report on competition for 2014, published on 4 June.
The report describes how the Commission uses the instruments available to it (monitoring of state aid, mergers and acquisitions, investigations into abuse of dominant positions and price-fixing) to pursue its objectives.
“Competition policy is essential to create a connected Digital Single Market as well as an integrated Energy Union, two of the most ambitious priorities on the Commission's agenda,” explained EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager.
In terms of the digital market, over the past three years, the European Commission has authorised more than €10 billion of state aid for high-speed connections, where it has found a failure of the market in the uniform deployment of high-speed networks in rural areas.
The Commission also ensures that high-speed mobile networks remain open and competitive. In October 2014, it fined Slovak Telekom and its partner company, Deutsche Telekom AG, nearly €39 million for five years of an abusive strategy to eliminate competitors from the Slovak high-speed services market (see EUROPE 10610). It also keeps an eye on mobile internet services and has been investigating the Android mobile operating system since April. The Commission announced this year that that it has opened an investigation of e-commerce.
For the energy industry, the Commission points out that in April 2014, it adopted new guidelines on state aid for energy and protection of the environment. It has simplified the implementation procedures for some kinds of state aid, including several categories of aid for energy and the environment in the revised general exemption by category regulation, so that they no longer need the prior agreement of the Commission.
The Commission sent a statement of objections to Gazprom in April (see EUROPE 11300). Its preliminary analysis indicates that Gazprom is preventing competition in the gas supply markets in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia.
When it comes to taxation, the EU competition policy works alongside Commissioner Moscovici, with the latter working on prevention and Commissioner Vestager on correction. Several investigations are under way to discern whether unlawful state aid has paid through tax rulings. After its investigations into Apple in Ireland, Fiat and Amazon in Luxembourg and Starbucks in Ireland, the Commission may draw up guidelines on the concept of tax rulings. (Elodie Lamer)