Europe's Antitrust Tsar Telegraphs Her Priorities

For all the headline-grabbing antitrust charges the European Commission filed last year — Google, Gazprom, MasterCard, Qualcomm and Disney, to name a handful — Europe’s competition czar Margrethe Vestager is still playing catch-up.

After her first year in office, Vestager is designing her legacy while wrestling with unfinished business from her predecessor, the Spaniard Joaquín Almunia.

“One thing that has been quite impressive is [how she is putting] the pedal down dealing with the backlog of cases from Almunia,” said Philippe Noguès, a competition lawyer at O’Melveny & Myers.

Almunia’s five years as competition commissioner were tumultuous. Amid the fallout of the financial crisis, the former commissioner for economic affairs and Socialist potentate held sway over bailouts worth tens of billions of euros.

Yet Almunia’s high-handed manner and taste for the public stage alienated lawyers and officials alike, and he left office with key cases unresolved.

Dealing with that handover has been at the heart of Vestager’s 2015. She redirected investigations against Google, and escalated the cases against Gazprom, Qualcomm and the Hollywood movie studios. At the same time, she suddenly closed probes into U.S. investment banks and global cement makers.

Vestager’s actions telegraphed her priorities for the next four years and set her apart from her predecessor. Read the rest of the story here: https://politi.co/1JoeHXA