It was a dark day for Apple Inc. and Google as they lost two of the biggest competition cases in European Union history.
Apple suffered a defeat over an EU-ordered €13 billion (R256.42 billion) Irish tax bill and Google faltered over its challenge of a €2.4 billion (R47.34 billion) fine for abusing its search market power.
But as the EU’s antitrust commissioner prepares to hand over the reins after a decade-long crusade against Silicon Valley’s excesses, vindication by the bloc’s highest court could signal a raft of further cases.
“I am afraid we’re only at the beginning,” Margrethe Vestager told reporters in Brussels after Tuesday’s double win. “Or, rather, the end of the beginning.”
The Dane’s successor is due to start work later this year as part of a new European Commission bent on building up regional companies to one day compete with American and Chinese giants.
The frontrunner for the role is Teresa Ribera, a Spanish socialist and current minister for ecological transition, according to people familiar with the matter.
Depending on the timing of Vestager’s departure, an early test of the emboldened new EU executive is likely be a pending fourth EU antitrust assault on Google, targeting its adtech business.
The EU previously warned that the only way of remedying Google’s dominance in adtech would be to mandate the breakup of the firm’s business in the area.
The US Department of Justice is now seeking a similar breakup as a trial gets underway across the Atlantic.
For the EU, “it’s difficult for us to see any other solution,” Vestager told Bloomberg TV on Tuesday. “The case is very, very advanced.”
While Ribera’s track-record in antitrust enforcement is non-existent, a much-anticipated report from former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi published Monday could also point the way forward.
Draghi pitched a rewriting of the EU’s competition policy rulebook so European firms can “compete with Chinese and American superstar companies.”
And should Spain’s Ribera take control of the prized competition portfolio, she will have at her armory the EU’s new digital antitrust toolbox — the Digital Markets Act.
The freshly minted law — pushed by Vestager after she tired of seeing digital markets lost to competition — gives the EU heavy fining powers, as well the right to order firms to be broken up in extreme cases.
With the new rules, Apple and Google are unlikely to escape further scrutiny.
Keen to set the standard, EU regulators in March opened a full-blown investigation into Apple, Google and Meta Platforms Inc., warning that if they don’t toe the line, they may face even more penalties.