Teresa Ribera set to become the 13th EU Competition Commissioner

Teresa Ribera Rodríguez is set to be the next European Commissioner for Competition assuming, as is widely expected, she is endorsed by the European Parliament.

She would be second Competition Commissioner holding Spanish nationality (along with Joaquin Almunia) and the third female to hold this high profile and powerful position (along with Neelie Kroes and incumbent Margrethe Vestager). Ribera will be one of 11 women in the new College of 27 Commissioners expected to take up their new positions in December.

In the Eurovision of nationalities, nationals from The Netherlands are in the lead with three Competition Commissioners, Luxembourg has two with Germany, Ireland, the UK, Italy, Belgium and Denmark having one point having each held the position only once but Spain is set to join the “deux-points” club.

While the position has occasionally been held for short periods or where an incumbent had to recuse themselves (e.g. Ireland’s Charlie McCreevy took some competition decisions while Neelie Kroes had to recuse herself in some cases), there have been 12 Competition Commissioners since Hans von der Groeben was appointed in 1958. Teresa Ribera is set to be the 13th.

She will also be one of the six Executive Vice-Presidents among the 27 Commissioners. She has been given the title of “Executive Vice-President of a Clean, Just and Competitive Transition”. She will be responsible for:

• competition policy
• ensuring that the EU stays on track for its goals set out in the European Green Deal
• ensuring that the EU both decarbonises and industrialises its economy simultaneously  

Any one of those three would be a heavy workload. However, all three simultaneously, is Herculean. Politico has described it as “perhaps, the most powerful post ever created” in the European Commission in its near 70 year history. Competition will be centre stage but will it be competing (every pun intended!) for attention?

What lies ahead for the 55-year-old lawyer and adjunct law professor who was a member of the Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party?  Among the several issues are:

• The usual fare of cartels, abuse of dominance, State aid and commercial deals that have characterised the “inboxes” of all new Competition Commissioners;
• Challenges in the digital space that begun in earnest with the two-term Vestager brief which started on 1 December 2019.  Ribera will have her hands full in that regard (e.g. DSA, DMA, killer acquisitions, and abuse of dominance along with new digital challenges that could emerge during her five-year term – five tech years are probably two human lifetimes). In that regard, she will interact closely with several other Commissioners Designate including Virkkunen (on Tech-Sovereignty) and McGrath (on Justice).
• The question of how the European Commission should deal with below-threshold mergers and acquisitions (i.e. deals where the turnovers of the parties fall below the level for compulsory notification) – the so-called Article 22 problem which has been thrown into sharp relief by the Illumina/Grail judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union on 3 September 2024;
• Whether to pursue the cases on tax/State aid rulings;
• How to deal with competition and the environment – having been the “Minister for the Ecological Transition of Spain” in the Sánchez Government in Madrid since 2018 and “Secretary of State for Climate Change” in the Zapatero Government for three years as well as the Director of the Institute of Sustainable Development and International Relations in Paris for four years, she will bring a wealth of experience to the new role in Brussels; and
• The 328-page Draghi Report and its 69-page overview - this is potentially the 21st century equivalent of the 1988 Cecchini Report which was the backbone of the 1992 programme. There will be pressure on the new Commissioner to show how competition policy can play a role in achieving the Draghi Report’s aims of revitalising and rejuvenating the EU. Incidentally, Ribera’s Chief of Staff-Designate, Miguel Gil Tertre, was on the team behind the Draghi Report.

The new Commissioner’s work will be watched closely by the Irish Government including whether she shows any interest in Irish-related State aid issues as well as how she addresses environmental and competition issues.

It is interesting that when President von der Leyen introduced her proposed team of 26 other commissioners, Ribera was the first on the list. In the second von der Leyen Commission, it may be that Ribera will be second among equals. Time will tell. But what is clear is that competition law and policy will be centre-stage in the “vdL2 Commission” but competing for attention in a busy environment.

For further information in relation to this topic, please contact Dr Vincent Power, Partner, or any member of the EU, Competition & Procurement group.

Date published: 23 September 2024