BUSINESSEUROPE supports a smart competition policy. We clearly recognise the fundamental role that well-functioning competition rules play in the internal market, both in terms of limiting distortions and ensuring more efficiency and innovation by allowing competitors to enter new markets and protecting consumer choice. Furthermore, EU competition policy is one of the few areas where the EU has extra-territorial teeth.
EU competition policy should ensure that effective competition between companies exists thereby contributing to job creation, growth and investment. It should also address the global challenges which businesses are facing in order to boost their and the EU’s overall competitiveness. As such, it is one of the key components of a successful EU industrial policy.
In this context, the Commission should explore how EU competitiveness can be enhanced and how, at the same time, the EU can adapt EU competition policy to developments on global markets. It should also be clear that the internal market is and will be a key driver of EU competitiveness. Its effective functioning should be ensured as it is a major advantage of the EU. The EU should ensure a level playing field for all business models allowing them to be competitive and to respond to customer demand, also in a rapidly changing digital environment. The EU should put in place: a more strategic industrial policy aimed at creating enabling conditions at EU level; a common approach to strategic EU value chains that also takes account of policies implemented by third countries; a smart implementation of EU competition rules to allow the emergence of new innovative firms that can grow into sizeable European companies, able to compete with global enterprises operating by different rules; and ensure that national and local rules are proportionate and fit for purpose. EU policies should converge towards common objectives.
