Vestager To Step Down As EU Competition Chief

Margrethe Vestager, the European Union’s principal competition commissioner, is expected to step down from her role in the coming weeks after two consecutive five-year terms, bringing to an end an era of tough regulatory enforcement for the tech industry.

During her decade in office Vestager levied record multibillion euro fines on the world’s biggest tech companies over abuse of market dominance and helped shape ground-breaking regulations including the Digital Markets Act and the world’s [first comprehensive regulation for AI].

She appeared on Time magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people in 2023, but became the target for US tech industry and political figures.

Apple chief executive Tim Cook called her order for Apple to pay 14.3 billion euros (£10.9bn) to Ireland “total political crap”, and Donald Trump while in office as US president called her the EU’s “tax lady”.

Fines, probes

Her term saw the DSA and the DMA come into effect and investigations opened into “gatekeepers” such as Apple, Google parent Alphabet and Facebook owner Meta Platforms over their efforts to comply with the laws.

More recently, the European General Court in 2020 ruled against the Apple tax order, while in 2023 the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled that Amazon did not have to pay 250m euros in back taxes to Luxembourg.

The Commission has appealed against the Apple ruling, with a final decision still pending.

The government of Vestager’s native Denmark planned to nominate a different candidate as their European commissioner after Vestager’s Social Liberal party did poorly in the 2022 elections and is no longer part of the ruling coalition, the Financial Times recently reported.

‘Vestager is out’

“Vestager is out. Nobody owes her anything,” a former minister from one of the current coalition parties told the paper.

German politician Ursula Von der Leyen, the EU’s president, is expected to hand out policy portfolios to EU member state candidates over the coming weeks.

The candidates will then face a hearing before the European Parliament and a confirmation vote.

Current Belgian commissioner Didier Reynders, Dutch commissioner Wopke Hoekstra and French commissioner Thierry Breton have been discussed as potential candidates to take on the antitrust role.