The European Union as a global market-shaping power. The historical evolution of the EU’s market-oriented reforms and competition policy

Abstract

How did Europe, once seen as a bureaucratic obstacle to free markets, become one of the world's most powerful defenders of competition, while the United States, the birthplace of modern antitrust law, increasingly struggled with the market dominance of corporate giants? This chapter explores this striking transatlantic reversal by tracing the historical evolution of the European Union as a global market-shaping power. It argues that the distinctive feature of European economic integration has never been liberalisation alone, but rather the deliberate combination of market opening with supranational regulation. From the European Coal and Steel Community to the Single Market revolution of the 1980s and the emergence of the Brussels Effect, the EU has progressively developed the institutional capacity to shape markets, constrain corporate power and influence business practices far beyond its borders. By contrasting European competition policy with its American counterpart, the chapter demonstrates how different political and institutional choices have produced divergent approaches to economic governance. Yet the European model now faces a fundamental dilemma. As digitalisation, China's economic rise, Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic intensify pressures for industrial protection and strategic autonomy, the EU's long-standing commitment to open and competitive markets is increasingly challenged by calls to nurture European champions. The chapter concludes by asking whether the EU can reconcile its traditional role as a guardian of competition with its emerging ambitions as a geopolitical and industrial power.