Vestager’s Biggest Hits (So Far) as Second Antitrust Term Awaits

(Bloomberg) -- Margrethe Vestager, the European Union’s antitrust chief, is poised to win another five-year term with extra power to set rules for internet giants as a policymaker tasked with making “Europe fit for the digital age.”

She’s expected to ace an interview later on Tuesday by European lawmakers who must approve her to become a vice-president of the European Commission from Nov. 1.

Silicon Valley has had a torrid time at the hands of the 51-year-old Dane, who’s now investigating Amazon.com Inc., after fining Google 8.2 billion euros ($9 billion) and extracting more than 13 billion euros in back taxes from Apple Inc.

But Vestager has also been unafraid of ruffling feathers at home in Europe: She refused to buckle to intense political pressure from Paris and Berlin by blocking a strategic rail deal linking up Siemens AG and Alstom SA and is now probing Germany’s powerful car industry.

Here are some of her biggest decisions so far:

Apple Tax

“Political crap” stormed Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook over the massive back-tax bill Vestager told Ireland to collect from the iPhone maker. Vestager targeted tax arrangements that she said allowed Apple pay an effective corporate tax of 1 percent on its European profits in 2003. Apple was unfairly painted as a tax dodger, its lawyers told a court last month in hope judges will overturn the order.

Google Power

Google has been hit three times by Vestager, with a record 2.4 billion-euro fine for discriminating against shopping search rivals surpassed last year by a 4.3 billion-euro penalty for linking its search and browser apps to the Android mobile-phone software distributes for free. It got a third and less hefty levy of 1.5 billion euros for violations linked to its advertising contracts in March. Google is challenging them in court. While it’s hard to hurt the Alphabet Inc. unit with fines, the search giant and regulators have struggled more with how to obey orders for Google to stop anti-competitive behavior.

Amazon Data

The world’s largest retailer became an official antitrust target this summer when Vestager said she’d check whether the company gains an advantage from data it collects on the success or failure of other sellers using Amazon’s marketplace platform. Amazon denies any anticompetitive violation but the probe picks up on concerns small companies have about the Internet platforms they rely on and sometimes compete with.

Following Facebook

Facebook could have brushed off a 110 million-euro fine for not informing Vestager’s team about how they were able to link data with messaging service WhatsApp if their troubles had ended there. But Vestager is now putting the social network under intense antitrust scrutiny over several parts of its business -- including its sales platform and how it uses and shares data from apps as well as its proposed Libra digital currency.

Off the Rails

Vestager faced a barrage of criticism from French and German officials over a veto to a proposed European champion rail deal that would allow Siemens and Alstom to take on a huge Chinese rival. Vestager fought charges that she wasn’t doing enough to help European business against Asian rivals by arguing that EU rules wouldn’t allow a deal that created a monopoly for high-speed rail and increased prices in Europe.

Cars and Trucks

Europe’s biggest cartel fines to date landed Daimler, DAF, Volkswagen AG and other truckmakers with a 3.8 billion-euro bill for plotting to rig prices for 14 years. They now face lawsuits from aggrieved customers. Volkswagen and Daimler learned a lesson when it came to another cartel investigation into clean-emissions technology for cars: both were quick to cooperate with regulators in return for immunity or lower fines.

To contact the reporter on this story: Aoife White in Brussels at awhite62@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net, Peter Chapman, Giles Turner

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