A COMPETITION POLICY

 

 Conclusion

When the three pillars of competition policy are all present – enforcement, procompetitive industrial policy and regulation of monopolies – the result is an economy that works for the people[13]. This toolkit allows a society to create and maintain the welfare-enhancing markets its firms and consumers want. Good EU policy will involve making necessary improvements to competition enforcement to keep it fit for purpose, regulating monopolies as necessary and re-designing state aid to make more strategic and useful.

Well-crafted industrial policy can be a good use of resources and it certainly does not require competition enforcement to be weakened. Indeed, the public’s money works more effectively when the firms it aids feel competitive pressure to use funds wisely. When the public projects that are given subsidies and infrastructure are chosen on the basis that they will open up and grow markets that are suffering from imperfections, and those projects are not used to anoint a winner and close those markets to others, society gains from industrial policy. This is not a subsidy race; rather, it is pro-competitive industrial policy.