How the EU wants to tweak its merger rules to boost growth

Good morning. News to start: Ukraine has agreed a minerals exploitation deal with the US that Kyiv hopes will improve relations with the Trump administration and pave the way for a long-term US security commitment for the country.

Today the EU will launch its Green Deal 2.0 Clean Industrial Deal, in a daring bid to marry its ambitious climate goals with a push to increase its economic competitiveness. Teresa Ribera, the commissioner given this exigent task, told the FT that despite intense pressure from industry to deregulate and pare back green rules, Brussels is merely simplifying them — and sticking to its guns.

Here, Ribera tells our competition correspondent more about how merger rules could be tweaked as part of this new approach, and the EU’s equality commissioner tells Laura that Brussels won’t be cowed by Donald Trump’s bonfire of US diversity protections.

Shifting the goalposts

The EU’s competition chief Teresa Ribera wants to take innovation, environmental and social standards more into account when policing mergers, she tells Barbara Moens.

Context: The European Commission, the EU’s top competition authority, is reconsidering how it polices dealmaking, in order to ensure the bloc’s merger rules will help European companies build scale to take on global rivals.

Ribera, who oversees both green policies and the enforcement of the bloc’s antitrust regime, said she wanted to work towards building a more “European approach” on mergers that would ultimately help “providing sustainable goods and equipment”.

Ribera said that it was important not just to focus on the lowest possible price when thinking about mergers, which would lead to “the lowest possible price for everything — including labour”.

She said other factors — such as “the environmental standards, the innovation components, the social engagement” — should be taken into account.

“We need to be sure that we retain the capacity to reinvest and ensure that we have the capacity to innovate, to ensure that we have the capacity to provide good quality jobs,” she said.

Ribera stressed it was about finding the right balance, similarly to the EU rules on state aid, which are receiving a makeover as part of the Clean Industrial Deal, which she is presenting today. The aim is to increase demand for clean technologies.

But finding European solutions also demanded that Brussels could not cave to outside pressure on its regulations, the Spanish socialist said.

The US administration has been stepping up its attacks on the EU’s tech rules, as Brussels tries to tackle the dominance of big online platforms such as Apple and Google.

Ribera stressed the EU’s digital rules were fair and clear, and that it was in the interest of both European and American consumers that their rights were protected.

Chart du jour: Shots fired

Vaccine scepticism was long a fringe phenomenon. But anti-vaxxers across the world have seized on growing public mistrust of the medical establishment — particularly since the start of the Covid pandemic — to reach an ever larger audience that cuts across both left and right.

Girlbosses

As the US further fuels an international backlash against diversity, equality and inclusion, the EU wants to set things straight. “Questioning equality is questioning progress,” EU equality commissioner Hadja Lahbib tells Laura Dubois.

Context: Even before US President Donald Trump went on a campaign against DEI policies, European governments have been chipping away at minority and women’s rights. Italy’s government has promoted so-called “traditional” family models, Hungary enacted laws curbing LGBT+ rights, and Poland restricted access to abortions.

Lahbib said that it was time “to restore a little bit of clarity of values” in the EU. She intends to do this by publishing a road map on women’s rights next week, reminding member states that “our union [is] built on diversity”.

“Some are on a different page when it comes to abortion, sexual and reproductive health rights,” she said, adding that in other countries, “it’s about labour markets”.

Lahbib said the initiative aimed to remind member states of the bloc’s common values, and bring them “in the same line” when it comes to implementing regulations.

“Inequality in general in the labour market costs €370bn a year in the whole European Union. So if we want to be competitive, let’s start there,” she said. According to the European Institute on Gender Equality, improvements in women’s rights could lead to an increase in EU GDP per capita of between 6-9 per cent by 2050.

However, Lahbib said that the road map would keep to general recommendations, and not, for instance, make concrete recommendations on abortions.

“It’s words,” she conceded. “But today, the words are very important.”

What to watch today

1. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen participates in an industrial summit in Antwerp.

2. College of European commissioners meets.

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