05/02/2020 (Agence Europe) – Giuseppe Conte, the President of the Italian Council of Ministers, said, on Tuesday 4 February in Brussels, after a meeting with the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, that competition rules should be applied with “prudence and reasonableness”. He thus joins the French and German position on the need to take the world market into account as a relevant market when analysing a merger (see EUROPE 12417/13). Mr. Conte said competition standards were developed “quite some time ago and the world market was not as developed as it is now”. Applying the rules literally “is a mistake and is self-limiting for our industrial champions. We must enable our European champions to grow and compete at the global level”, he said. (LC)