Rebalancing Europe - A new economic agenda for tackling monopoly power
On Monday April 15th, The Open Markets Institute and a coalition of organizations committed to challenging monopoly power in Europe brought together leading policymakers and thinkers for a half-day conference in Brussels where they discussed ways for Europe to better address monopoly control over markets and democracies.
The event took place at a time in which Europe is faced with a multitude of challenges: an increasingly unstable and fragmented geopolitical order, the accelerating impact of climate change on our natural word, the ever-growing power of a few tech monopolies over public debate, and a cost-of-living crisis that is driving citizens into distress.
A new European anti-monopoly manifesto, published by the coalition of groups ahead of the event, provided an outline for putting anti-monopoly at the heart of the next European Commission’s policy agenda and provided further inspiration for the discussions.
Highlights of the day’s discussions included:
The ways extreme concentration reduces the availability and increases the prices of the critical foods, commodities and drugs that citizens depend on in their daily lives
How monopolies harm workers and undermine collective bargaining, including by lowering wages, degrading working conditions and preventing unionization
The need for a much broader approach of EU competition policy, by returning to the original meaning of the law as enshrined in the European treaties
The importance of a “whole-of-government” approach to tackling concentration, bringing together antitrust, data protection, consumer protection and other regulatory powers
The need for a “new competition tool” at the EU level, enabling the European Commission to investigate competition problems across entire industries, not just individual companies or cartels
The role of monopoly power in weakening and distorting innovation, especially in relation to artificial intelligence
How the EU’s Digital Markets Act is designed to open up competition in digital markets, and the need to crack down on non-compliance by Big Tech firms
The importance of civil society groups in counterbalancing aggressive lobbying by powerful firms against effective enforcement of competition policy