Might bigger be better? How European Union competition policy became geopolitical

The European Union’s Competition Policy (EUCP) faces new challenges in the geopolitical age. Several modifications to EUCP have been adopted or proposed over the past half decade, even though the policy area has long been viewed as a bedrock of the single market under the purview of the Commission, and actively defended by both Commission officials and a range of member state governments. This article applies elements of liberal intergovernmentalism and focuses upon how the preferences of major manufacturing firms and company associations have shaped member state government preferences on EUCP. We build on how liberal intergovernmentalism understands these preferences by examining the competitiveness of European firms at the international level and the different patterns of external interdependence that have generated conflicting responses to the economic and political pressures emanating from the EU’s two main trading partners: the US and China. As liberal intergovernmentalism would predict, a shift in German and French government preferences on EUCP largely explains the changes adopted to date. However, we also detect a situation of ‘disjointed external interdependence’, and broader Franco-German efforts to reform EUCP have been resisted by some other member states governments – notably the Dutch.