An American appointed to regulate economic competition in Europe. This is the announcement made by the European Commission on Tuesday July 11, which confirmed the installation of Fiona Scott Morton, 56-year-old eminent economist and ultra-specialist of Gafam, as head of the Directorate General for European Competition, the body of the Commission responsible for applying the rules of competition. Its role will be to steer the fight against monopolies within the Union. But his appointment is controversial.
Became a professor at Yale after leaving the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the economist founded within the school the Thurman Arnold research project dedicated to competition policy and the application of antitrust laws, bringing together students and professors. Between 2011 and 2012, she also led the fight against companies with anticompetitive practices within the Department of Justice of former President Barack Obama, with the aim of enforcing laws limiting the monopoly of tech giants.
A risk of conflicts of interest?
His qualifications are therefore undeniable, but his career is worrying. In parallel with her courses, Fiona Scott Morton worked between 2006 and 2011 at Charles River Associates as a consultant for digital giants, such as Microsoft, which she advised during the launch of the acquisition of the publisher of Activision video games, but also Apple or Amazon. In 2019, she thus took a position in a tribune of the washington post against the split of Gafam, envisaged by the European Commission.
Activities that raise the question of possible conflicts of interest, while the consultant has probably signed confidentiality agreements with these companies that have vigorously fought the adoption by the EU of digital regulation texts (such as the DSA and the DMA) in recent years. As early as May – even before his appointment – organizations such as the Balanced Economy Project, Corporate Europe Observatory, European Digital SME Alliance, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties or LobbyControl addressed, according to Reutersa letter to the European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager to express their reservations.
Fiona Scott Morton will play a key role in the competition authority’s investigations into Alphabet, Google, Apple, Meta Platforms and Microsoft, as well as high-profile mergers such as Amazon’s acquisition of iRobot or the from Figma by Adobe. She has already worked in the US administration on ways to regulate the activities of two tech giants, Facebook and Google, and will be responsible for developing similar ideas in European law.
An American becomes a senior European official
Fiona Scott Morton will replace Belgian Pierre Régibeau, who will retire on September 1, 2023. She will be the first woman to hold this position. But also the first American, which is very badly received by many European actors, who choke on seeing the hiring of a person from outside the EU to a position located at the heart of the economic system of the Old Continent. “Are we obliged to recruit from the American Gafam? If we add the revolving door [dans des cabinets d’avocats] from certain senior officials of the Commission: the digital giants are well surrounded to navigate in the new European regulatory environment…”, tweeted Macronist MEP Stéphanie Yon-Courtin on July 12.
Fiona Scott Morton will not, however, have a position allowing her to take or apply direct decisions, since she will act under the direction of the Dane Margrethe Vestager, known for her tireless fight against the monopoly of multinationals and Gafam. .