The European Union needs to protect its industry better against foreign influence as well as a reform of competition laws, Manfred Weber, the top candidate of the European Peoples Party (EPP) in the forthcoming European parliament elections, said.
Weber, deputy leader of Germany's Christian Social Union party, said after a meeting of the party leadership on Monday that Europe needed a "powerful deterrence mechanism" against corporate takeovers if there was evidence that investors were not pursuing a classic investment but instead had industrial policy goals.
Referring to the discussion about the proposed merger of the train divisions of the French concern Alstom and Siemens of Germany, Weber called for a reform of EU competition regulations.
"It cannot be that the EU Commission prohibits the concrete cooperation between Siemens and Alstom with the argument that competition would then become more difficult in Europe," he said. The construction of high-speed trains is a huge market that involved thousands upon thousands of jobs throughout Europe.
"The fact is that in these large markets we must not think in terms of European competition, but rather think about global competition," Weber said. For this reason the EU should make it possible for so-called Global Champions to take root. Without these, the continent would no longer be competitive in the global competition.
"The Commission should not be a bureaucracy apparatus just to enact technical rules," he said. The EU Commission should think more politically with a view towards jobs and future options.
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