Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 4:45 pm on 4 December 2018.
Lord Berkeley
Labour
4:45,
4 December 2018
My Lords, my understanding is that these draft regulations will apply only if we crash out or similar with no deal at the end of March next year. As the noble Baroness said, there are some interesting questions, to which we need answers.
I should like to get some answers from the Minister about what happens to some of the cases that are being considered at present by either the CMA or the European Commission competition authorities. Such cases run for years. They may have started now, but they certainly will not finish. Presumably anything that starts before
One case I have got slightly involved in watching is between two railway manufacturing companies, Siemens and Alstom. Siemens has its head office in Germany and Alstom has its head office in France, I think. They have been proposing a merger of all their businesses for several years now. The European Commission has got to the stage of issuing something that is not technically an opinion, but seems to me to be an opinion, which suggests that a merger would be a bad idea for competition across Europe in the whole railway sector. The companies appear to have been trying to promote the merger as a way of preventing Chinese industries taking over everything in Europe, including the UK. Both companies have subsidiaries in the UK; some make trains, some make signalling and some do other things. If that merger went ahead on the continent—within Europe—could the CMA stop a merger between their subsidiaries in this country, or vice versa? How would it work? If they wanted to merge in this country, would the CMA’s decision apply in Europe?
Presumably, if any of this is to work at all, there has to be some communication between the CMA and the European Commission’s competition department on issues such as this. I would welcome a comment from the Minister as to how that conversation—it may be only a conversation—would happen and the extent to which a decision by one party would be binding on the other. I look forward to his comments.
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