The News
The European Commission named Italian academic Emanuele Tarantino as its chief competition economist. In the role, which has a three-year term, he will be expected to balance spurring technological innovation while reining in large corporations, particularly Big Tech.
Europe’s competitiveness — both on the domestic and global fronts — appears to be waning, a recent report suggested, fueling concerns that the continent’s economy is falling far behind the US and China.
It is unclear how Tarantino might steer the bloc forward, yet his appointment comes after a US economist, Fiona Scott Morton, withdrew her nomination for the role after French lawmakers suggested her being American may impinge antitrust actions targeting US firms, especially tech.
SIGNALS
Silicon Valley is pushing hard for EU deregulation
In a report published last month, former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi warned that current EU industrial and competition policy means that “innovative companies… are hindered at every stage by inconsistent and restrictive regulations,” emphasizing that new AI laws could stifle the emerging sector before it could even have a chance to emerge. Tech industry figures, including Elon Musk — a sometime target of scrutiny for EU antitrust officials as a result of the sweeping Digital Markets Act — hailed the report “as a welcome corrective on the EU’s regulatory posture,” The Washington Post noted. Some may see Tarantino’s appointment as an opportunity to push that stance.
But Brussels is unlikely to let go of the reins that quickly
Despite being “occasionally overbearing,” Draghi and other European economists recognize that the bloc’s competition policy “is one of the continent’s success stories,” The Economist wrote. In turn, the goal for the EU’s economic competition going forward should be “evolution, not revolution,” theFinancial Times argued. Company mergers, which some big European players have argued would consolidate resources and promote the innovation the bloc craves, are a major concern — much of the bloc’s domestic innovation is driven by small tech startups and medium-sized firms, which if merged, could follow patterns seen elsewhere — and lead to less competition and innovation overall: “US tech firms have a history of acquiring smaller rivals to neutralise them,” the FT wrote.