he Commissioner for Competition at the European Commission, Teresa Ribera, warned that political influences are in danger of corrupting competition enforcement decisions. Ribera argues that antitrust must stay strong against politics and its pressures to ensure impartial and evidence-based enforcement policies. In a statement, she emphasized independence from political pressures and emphasized a willingness to consider industrial policy goals in merger reviews, potentially allowing more leniency for European companies compared to her predecessors.
“I have not got any type of interference on the political bias approach on how we need to deliver. We are bound by the law. We have been developing our own update on how we may assess the different cases, and we have always been quite respectful, and that is my case as commissioner, but also the case of my predecessors in the role of commissioner,” said Ribera during a press conference.
These stances were taken in response to growing pressures to change how competition policy is handled, with antitrust authorities in some regions facing pushback to clear mergers or drop investigations in favor of national economic threats, as stated by MLex. Last November, Ribera also accused the United States of “blackmail” on tech regulation, emphasizing the EU competition policy would not change to accommodate U.S. political pressure or threats of tariffs, according to an article in Politico. 