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Senators Ask EC To Let Oracle-Sun Deal Go Through
An anonymous reader writes "The European Union has managed to do something that US Presidents often find difficult: to make 59 US Senators from both sides of the aisle agree on something. A group led by John Kerry (D) and Orrin Hatch (R) has sent a letter to the European Union, asking it to wrap up the investigation of the Oracle-Sun merger and let the deal go through. Interestingly, the letter emphasizes the damage the delay and uncertainty are doing to Sun." The article paraphrases a Gartner analyst, who points out that the Senators' letter "comes from a US point of view and doesn't take into account how the EU operates."
Is it? If you forced Microsoft to split into several parts each offering their own branched operating system, you would reduce large-firm dominance, but there's no promise this would be anti-harmful to consumers. If you forced Microsoft to split into several parts but retain the OS section in one of them, you have implicitly acknowledged an economy of scale and integration argument for large companies.
This is nothing more than the EU protecting a European company from stiffer competition.
Selection bias. When the EC recently ordered the breakup of two of the world's largest financial institutions (one of which was the largest in the world), you didn't hear about it, because they are based in the Netherlands and the UK and don't make gadgets. As such it's not news that's relevant to slashdot or any other American media, or so you will never hear about it.
The same story with european grocery giants, beer giants, engineering giants and petroleum companies that have been investigated or sanctioned by the EC. By definition, you will never hear about it unless the target is a multinational based in the US, because you have no reason to read foreign media.
I actually do think the EC anti trust office has overused its power under the current commissioner, especially when it comes to dismantling banks, but there is no evidence for any bias based on countries; the harshest measures have been against European companies.
I think you have that backwards.
In the USA, The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
In the EU, EU law has direct effect within the legal systems of its Member States, and overrides national law in many areas, especially in areas covered by the Single Market.
The Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe would have limited the competences of the EU to only those areas voluntarily conferred to it by member states (similar to the 10th amendment of the US constitution), but the treaty was not ratified by France and the Netherlands, and therefore not implemented.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.