EU merger shake-up exposes von der Leyen–Ribera clash of visions 

BRUSSELS — A seemingly innocent manual on how the EU executive vets corporate deals is exposing differences between President Ursula von der Leyen and her number two in charge of competition, Teresa Ribera.

The European Commission on Thursday published a draft of its revised merger guidelines — a 100-page document outlining how the competition department should examine major corporate mergers. 

The guidelines aim to balance the EU’s traditional antitrust rules — designed to curb excessive corporate power — with pressure from Germany and France to loosen them and enable the creation of more “European champions,” or large, homegrown firms that can compete on a global scale.

Thursday’s release was the product of months of cut and thrust between the two top leaders of the EU executive — and their statements reflected their divergent priorities.

Von der Leyen said the guidelines would support European companies “to thrive, scale, and innovate.” Ribera, for her part, said the founding purpose of the measures remained unchanged, “protecting strong, competitive markets without allowing an accumulation of power that can be abused.”

The two personify those differences: Von der Leyen, from the political center right, is attuned to industry interests in her native Germany, while Ribera, a Spanish socialist, is fiercely loyal to her competition staff and determined not to undermine the foundations of the bloc’s single market.

They haven’t openly clashed over the guidelines. Yet while Ribera is formally responsible for them, von der Leyen has pushed in her second term to assert political ownership over the project.

“It’s time to deliver,” she said in a speech last September marking the first anniversary of an economic strategy report by Mario Draghi, the former European Central Bank governor and Italian prime minister, that she had commissioned. Von der Leyen used that speech to call for the merger guidelines to be moved up by a year.

Within hours, Ribera summoned reporters to respond, saying it was important to “stay calm” and not give in to “vested interests” — an apparent reference to calls by industry bosses to loosen the merger restrictions.

First mover

Von der Leyen appeared again to take the spotlight when the Financial Times reported a leak of the guidelines on April 16 under the headline “EU to relax merger rules in bid to create ‘European champions’” — accompanied by her picture.

The FT article cited an unnamed official describing the merger guidelines as “a break from the past” that reflected the realities of increasingly challenging global competition.

That is a line that has also been advocated with increasing urgency by Germany and France — and the European telecoms industry — as fears grow that the continent is falling further behind China’s industrial exporters and U.S. tech giants.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen delivers a speech at the European Parliament in Strasbourg on April 29, 2026. | Sebastien Bozon/AFP via Getty Images

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz included a call to build industrial “champions” in his election manifesto before winning power a year ago. And, at an EU leaders’ retreat in February to discuss competitiveness, French President Emmanuel Macron said the merger review should make it easier for “great European champions to emerge.”

Following the FT article, Ribera gave a series of interviews — including with POLITICO — saying the guidelines should not offer a free pass for unfettered consolidation. 

“It is not the thing to solve different types of problems that industries in Europe may be facing in global markets,” she reiterated at a Brussels press conference a few days later.

“The global economy has changed, the global markets have changed, the different European public interests that need to be preserved need to be updated.” But, she added: “The regulatory framework remains.”

Ribera’s competition department delivered the document in short order after von der Leyen’s call to hurry it up.

A first draft was ready by mid-March, although von der Leyen’s cabinet only decided to advance the process a month later, an EU official confirmed to POLITICO, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The guidelines, now open to public feedback, are ultimately a versatile document. They encourage companies to argue that their deals are good for the EU economy, and spell out avenues for officials to assess these claims — for example on the basis of innovation, resilience, or investment. 

But in the end, officials have a wide margin for interpretation, which is why antitrust lawyers aren’t really buying the change until they see it play out in concrete cases. 

They’re a bit like the Bible, Assimakis Komninos, a senior antitrust partner at White & Case, told POLITICO: “Everybody can read anything into it.”