eGov monitor - Consumers at the heart of EU Competition Policy

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Consumers at the heart of EU Competition Policy

Defending consumers' interests is at the heart of the Commission's competition policy. In concrete terms: competition gives citizens better goods and services, and ensures businesses have more opportunities to sell them. In the last year there have been some good examples – from Microsoft's dramatically reduced royalty rates, to wins for Telefonica and Mastercard customers. In fact, we calculate that the direct future customer savings resulting from our cartel, antitrust, liberalisation and merger cases in 2007 alone, is at least 13.8 billion euros. About 30 euros in the pocket for each of Europe's 500 million citizens. And then there are obvious deterrent effects we cannot put a price on. Another thing we can't yet put a price on is justice.