Date: 2013-06-11
Mr President, thank you very much, first of all, to Mr Sánchez Presedo for this excellent report on the 2011 annual competition report. And my thanks also to those Members from the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs , the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection and the Committee on Transport and Tourism Mr Ungureanu, Mr Schwab and Mr Kamall who also contributed to Parliament's report on our work in 2011. This is the fourth competition report during the term in office of the Barroso II Commission, of my term in office as Commissioner for Competition, and I am happy to say before this Parliament that the dialogue between our two institutions on competition policy continues to deepen and I welcome very much your support for the work of the Commission on competition enforcement. As you know, this report was structured to better respond to Parliament's wishes, allowing us to focus on key policy areas. We have continued to improve the report in 2012. I had the opportunity recently to present this new report to the ECON Committee and I hope that we have been able to reflect some of your comments on last year's report in this year's one. As I said when I presented the 2011 report to you, almost one year ago, one of our main goals is to maintain stability amid persistent turbulence in financial markets. We continue to use State aid rules to restructure and resolve banks which needed public support to preserve financial stability, minimise the cost to public finances, and ensure that restructured banks are sufficiently viable to be able to lend to companies and households. On this point I fully agree with Mr Sánchez Presedo's words a few minutes ago. You are well aware of the ongoing discussions around banking supervision and restructuring. On the competition side, we will soon put forward revised State aid guidelines for banks. They will reflect current practice in our case work and include stricter burden-sharing requirements for shareholders and junior creditors, and will provide that, in principle, only reversible measures like loans or guarantees can be approved as rescue aid. Thus, we hope that taxpayers will feel less of the pain when a bank needs to be restructured. One year ago I outlined our plans for the modernisation of State aid. Since then we have been working hard to take this forward, and I welcome the contribution of the ECON Committee and the Transport Committee to this work through the Pietikäinen and the Dorfmann reports. I look forward to these reports being adopted in this Parliament in due course. Another important project has been the revision of the Regional Aid Guidelines, which was discussed here last night based on the Vlasák report and which the Commission will try to adopt in the coming weeks. I welcome Parliament's support for our firm enforcement of the antitrust rules and for the ongoing fight against cartels, in which both our fining policy and settlement procedure play important roles. I note your reiterated call for the Commission to review the Fining Guidelines. This is a topic which we have discussed on several occasions during recent years. I want to repeat that setting the fines is not an arbitrary exercise. The framework for our fining powers and fining policy is set out in a Council Regulation Regulation No 1/2003. This contains objective criteria which limit our discretion: the fines shall reflect the gravity and the duration of the infringements and cannot exceed 10 % of the undertaking's total worldwide turnover. We also decided, as have other competition authorities, and as a matter of transparency, to provide further details of our methodology in the Guidelines the guidelines that are binding for our work. These guidelines take the view that the current legal framework ensures that fines achieve punitive and deterrent effects while allowing the Commission to react quickly to and take into account company-specific and market-related situations. The European Court of Justice has confirmed the legality of this approach on several occasions. In your report, Parliament draws the Commission's attention to several specific sectoral issues. We share your concerns about the level of competition in sectors such as energy and transport. In such fields, our policy and our regulatory work go hand in hand. Concerning the full implementation of the third energy package, my colleague Mr Oettinger and his Directorate-General may take the lead; the same in the transport sector with my colleague Mr Kallas and the same in the digital sector, in the telecoms sector, with my colleague Ms Neelie Kroes. As you said, in difficult times it is ever more important for markets to work efficiently and fairly, to deliver the benefits to businesses of all sizes and to European citizens and consumers, and with your help, we will continue to achieve this. In another area of key importance to consumers, the Commission shares your concerns in relation to the volatility of food prices. The report published by the European Competition Network last year shows that the food sector has been a priority for competition authorities, which have been very active in enforcing competition law and monitoring market developments. Between 2001 and 2011, the national competition authorities investigated more than 180 antitrust cases in this area, took close to 1 300 merger decisions, and monitored around 100 activities. The Commission stands ready to investigate any possible anti-competitive agreements between different players in the supply chain which would ultimately lead to price increases for our consumers. I also agree fully with you that consumers are the final beneficiaries of our competition enforcement action. So I think that on all these areas we probably share the same objectives, the same priorities, and I hope very much that we will continue to work together. I am very keen now to listen to your views in the debate and to continue our dialogue.