Speaker 1: Margaretta Vestaire, the European Unions Director at General for a Competition,
Speaker 1: is well known in the United States for actions like
Speaker 1: a ruling last year that Ireland had granted illegal tax
Speaker 1: benefits to Apple, resulting in a fourteen billion dollar liability
Speaker 1: for Apple. She says she's enforcing Europe's view of a
Speaker 1: fair market. What we are looking at is, of course
Speaker 1: the competition and uh, and we do want to see
Speaker 1: that also the successful company is also going big, but
Speaker 1: they allow for others to challenge them. But some see
Speaker 1: an instinctive mistrust of big corporations on her part, and
Speaker 1: the Staire's tenure has provoked anger from many large American companies.
Speaker 1: Samath sup Supermannian as an award winning author and a
Speaker 1: contributor to Bloomberg Business Week, and he has written a
Speaker 1: profile of Vastaire for Bloomberg Business Week which is out now. Samantha,
Speaker 1: thanks for being here with us. Uh. You know, she
Speaker 1: seems to have a particular person active on matters of
Speaker 1: competition in Europe. What is it that is her sort
Speaker 1: of philosophy about how to approach questions of fair competition? Well,
Speaker 1: I think her basic philosophy over here is that Europe
Speaker 1: has a very fixed and definite view of what a
Speaker 1: fair market is, and that view may differ from how
Speaker 1: the Americans view to how the Chinese view it. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know that's fine, for each market has its
Speaker 1: own rules and its own perspective. But if you want
Speaker 1: to play in Europe, you have to play by the
Speaker 1: European rule book. Um. And this is uh, this is
Speaker 1: this is this sort of a foundational philosophy of the
Speaker 1: EU itself is that if the market is policed well
Speaker 1: and sensibly a certain way, it sort of distributes the
Speaker 1: widest and deepest benefits to society. So in you know,
Speaker 1: from the from the point of view of the US,
Speaker 1: it can often seem as if we use vision of
Speaker 1: a free market is much more constricted and narrow. But
Speaker 1: I think we have to sort of look at it
Speaker 1: from within the EU itself and trying to see what
Speaker 1: they're trying to achieve. You write that in late March,
Speaker 1: the Office of the US Trade Representative reiterated its opinion
Speaker 1: that the STAY is deviating to form far from prior
Speaker 1: case law. And you quote one former Treasury official from
Speaker 1: the Obama administration is saying her staff resembled a bunch
Speaker 1: of plumbers doing electric work. Explain that is she deviating
Speaker 1: from prior case law. Well, I mean, I don't think
Speaker 1: he's deviating so much, a sort of pushing the envelope
Speaker 1: a little bit. But we have to remember these are
Speaker 1: these are very specific times we're living in, you know,
Speaker 1: after two thousand eight, not only in Europe, but even
Speaker 1: in the US, there's been sort of a widespread public
Speaker 1: sentiment because there are too many corporations getting away with
Speaker 1: too much sort of with paying two little tacks that
Speaker 1: they can't say, sort of evading or eluding paying the
Speaker 1: rightful amount of tax by setting up officers and attacks
Speaker 1: haven about moving money around overseas. And this is a
Speaker 1: sentiment that is not just prevalent in Europe but in
Speaker 1: the US as well. Uh so, so the rules that
Speaker 1: vest Tailor and her office are playing by. The rules
Speaker 1: are already there on people, they are part of the
Speaker 1: brief of the office itself, but she's certainly being sort
Speaker 1: of a lot more activist in the way in which
Speaker 1: she's enforcing them. Some months. The the way that you know,
Speaker 1: it comes across to a lot of American companies, particularly
Speaker 1: companies like Apple, where that have been the subject of
Speaker 1: rulings by the EU that haven't been in their favor.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it looks to them as though she's really and
Speaker 1: she and her her colleagues in the EU are really
Speaker 1: targeting big American multinational companies. Is that a fair assessment
Speaker 1: of the way that she and the EU have approached
Speaker 1: these matters? No, I don't think it is. I mean
Speaker 1: we have to remember that a lot of her so
Speaker 1: calls are big American cases that she's ruling on now,
Speaker 1: which is Apple, last year, Google, which to be later
Speaker 1: this year. All these cases were actually opened during the
Speaker 1: tenure of her previous of the previous Competition commissioner. You
Speaker 1: of who's from Spain. And if you look at the
Speaker 1: statistics of the number of cases that she has opened
Speaker 1: during her own tenure, I mean they don't They answer
Speaker 1: wildly off the charts in terms of how many American
Speaker 1: companies they target. Just to give you an example, her
Speaker 1: predecessor opened two hundred seventy six anti trust cases during
Speaker 1: his tenure, or thirty nine of them were American investors.
Speaker 1: Two and a half year terms. So far, eleven out
Speaker 1: of eighty one companies have been American in the anti
Speaker 1: trust cases she's opened. So the ratios aren't sort of
Speaker 1: you know, you know, they aren't really they don't justify
Speaker 1: the kind of prevalent sense that she's anti American. I
Speaker 1: think it's just the sort of the size of the
Speaker 1: Apple Award, combined with the particular timing of Apple and
Speaker 1: Google and Star Wucks and Amazon, all of these cases
Speaker 1: coming together over the course of one or two calendar years,
Speaker 1: that's making it seem as if she's she's particularly vindictive
Speaker 1: towards the big American cooperation. But I don't think that's
Speaker 1: the case. You write about her discussion of competition law
Speaker 1: in the severe moral terms of a biblical patriarch. Is
Speaker 1: she strict by the rules and no room for compromise?
Speaker 1: I think he is. I think there's this sort of, uh,
Speaker 1: it's a very black and white world that that she inhabits.
Speaker 1: I think, I mean, she used to be a politician
Speaker 1: in Denmark, and you know the nature of being a
Speaker 1: politician itself is you sort of compromise here and there,
Speaker 1: you make deals. You don't automatically get sort of the
Speaker 1: ideal vision of the world that you want. And a
Speaker 1: lot of people who have met in Copenhagen said that
Speaker 1: she's really come into the office that she can best inhabit,
Speaker 1: the office of the of the competition commissioner, something where
Speaker 1: you're handed a playbook or rule book and you literally
Speaker 1: just you you could sit in a tower and make
Speaker 1: these decisions based on what's given to you on paper.
Speaker 1: There's no sort of there's not much room for negotiation,
Speaker 1: don't have to cut deals. It's really sort of cut
Speaker 1: and dried, and it's something that she's she has temperamentally
Speaker 1: been suited to almost all her career. Well, speaking of
Speaker 1: her career, well, how is it that she ended up
Speaker 1: in this position. I mean, she was a very she
Speaker 1: was sort of a young tyro in Danish politics. M
Speaker 1: she joined in when she was twenty. She joined her
Speaker 1: party in first ran for the Danish Parliament. She lost
Speaker 1: that particular race, but she's been working with her party
Speaker 1: ever since she was twenty years old. It's a party
Speaker 1: that has a particular kind of fondness for policy wonkery.
Speaker 1: I guess you could call it. Uh. They are sort
Speaker 1: of an essentially pragmatic party where they do what's best
Speaker 1: for the people are regardless of which part of the
Speaker 1: ideological spectrum of solution comes from. So she rose quite fast.
Speaker 1: And I think in sort of the mid two thousand's
Speaker 1: she became known very quickly, uh for sort of taking
Speaker 1: tough decisions, for taking decisions that she believed to be right,
Speaker 1: even if it earned her a men it of fun,
Speaker 1: popularity over top colleagues, over the people, and uh. And
Speaker 1: she was part of a coalition government and she did
Speaker 1: quite well over there. She was a Minister of the
Speaker 1: economy and she as a minister of the economy, she
Speaker 1: was working a lot within the intra u circuit of
Speaker 1: economic and finance ministers. So I think when it came
Speaker 1: time for Denmark to appoint somebody uh to the new
Speaker 1: you commissionered it, they chose Westo Well. Our thanks to
Speaker 1: Samantha Supermanian for joining us today to talk about his
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business Week article on Margaret Margaretta Vestaire excuse me,
Speaker 1: the European Union Director at General for Competition. A lot
Speaker 1: of companies around the world, not just in America, Google,
Speaker 1: gaz prom, Apple, Fiat, Amazon, Starbucks, are going to be
Speaker 1: affected by her actions in the upcoming couple of years.
Speaker 1: That's it for this edition of Bloomberg Law. We'll be
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