Journalist Lewis Crofts shares his analysis on current competition policy regulations
On Monday 18 May, the Official Spanish Chamber of Commerce in Belgium and Luxembourg organised a breakfast debate as part of its Competencia España working group and its Círculo de Negocios forum, featuring Lewis Crofts, editor-in-chief of MLex, a publication specialising in legal and regulatory affairs. Mr Crofts shared his analysis of current regulation and decision-making within the European Commission on competition matters.
The event began with an introduction to Crofts by the president of Competencia España, Cecilio Madero, who thanked the journalist for his willingness to share his insights and highlighted his long career at the specialist publication MLex. Crofts currently oversees the publication’s editorial output as editor-in-chief, having previously served as managing editor for seven years.
In his speech, Crofts noted that, after twenty years’ experience as a journalist in Brussels, competition policy has become “difficult in last couple of years”, after a “golden age”. In his view, this field is currently under more “pressure” than ever, and he assessed that this is a time of great difficulty for antitrust policy.
In his view, this situation is due to external pressure from other geopolitical actors, which is forcing Europe to accelerate its industrial policy, as well as to technological advances that have changed the approach to legislation and decision-making in the field of competition.
In this regard, he shared his assessment of the content of the draft of the new guidelines established by the European Commission on competition, which combines the guidelines for a ‘new Europe’ with the concerns of previous years and whose impact, he believed, will become apparent when one of the Member States applies it in an agreement with a major sector.
Those attending the meeting then had the opportunity to share their views and raise questions relating to technology policy, the quality of the new rules in the new scenarios outlined, or the need for change in the context of these, amongst other topics.
An event organised by:
