Brussels, 27/06/2001 (Agence Europe) - Commissioners Mario Monti (competition) and Loyola de Palacio (transport) have strongly disapproved on the criticisms leveled by an American Senator claiming that the Commission dealt partially in the issue of the GE/Honeywell merger. In a letter addressed to the European Executive on 19 June, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Chair of the Aviation Sub-Committee in the Senate, accused the Commission of being "mainly motivated by a desire to protect European aeronautical companies from increased, but legitimate, American competition". Such "concerns" are "wholly unfounded", replied Mr. Monti and Ms. de Palacio as one, the Commission applying to competition "the fundamental principle of non-discrimination". "In this particular case, as each time", the European Executive first asked itself whether "the market remained sufficiently competitive to enable consumers to continue to have a choice between products at competitive rates". The Commissioners repeated that "the nationality of the companies and political considerations played no, nor would play any, role in the examination" of the GE/Honeywell merger, and that, moreover, "several American companies complained and played an active role in the hearings held by the Commission", as Monti had already stressed two weeks ago (see EUROPE of 18&19 June, pp.15-16). The Commissioner for competition also stressed that the Commission "does not apply new or fantastical theories" when examining issues, but rigorously tests to see whether the "market remains sufficiently competitive". To illustrate the validity of their words, the Commissioners annexed a table of 1,649 cases of merger examinations between 1 September 1990 and 21 June 2001 by the Commission to their letter to the Senator. It emerges that of 394 cases involving at least one American company, only one was blocked by Brussels, the MCI Worldcom/Sprint merger, also condemned by the American anti-trust authorities.