Authorisation of mergers

1.2.2001

ORAL QUESTION H-0139/01
for Question Time at the part-session in March 2001
pursuant to Rule 43 of the Rules of Procedure
by Armonia Bordes
to the Commission

The European Commission grants authorisations for mergers involving European companies. Its main concern is clearly to ensure that the rules on competition are applied.

 

Major companies which decide to merge always use mergers to get rid of thousands of jobs and to close down industrial sites.

 

The adverse employment and social consequences of mergers usually come to the attention of public opinion when the merger is announced and therefore cannot escape the Commission’s notice when it gives its opinion.

 

The job losses are particularly shocking because they occur in companies whose success and good performance are plain for all to see. Despite this, the Commission does not seem to take any account of this aspect of mergers when it grants authorisations.

 

Since the European Union, in all of the texts it adopts on economic policy, is in the habit of adding one or two paragraphs saying that it wishes to preserve Europe’s social dimension, and in order to ensure that these declarations do not remain just meaningless words, we should like to know how many mergers the current Commission has authorised and how many jobs have been lost as a result?

 

 

Tabled: 01.02.2001

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