An undisputed lesson from history is that a social market economy needs strong competition supervision. Its task is to prevent cartels and other abuses of market power and thus keep markets open to new competitors. This not only protects customers, but also promotes innovation. The difficulty lies in finding the right balance for competition control and giving it clear powers. If the cartel watchdogs put the brakes on resourceful companies prematurely or for no reason, this costs growth and prosperity.
With its reform of antitrust law, the traffic light government is unfortunately turning into swampy terrain in terms of competition policy. In the future, it should be sufficient for the Cartel Office to determine a "significant or continuous disturbance" of a market on the basis of a diffuse list of criteria in order to sanction companies. Without proof of a violation of the Cartel Act, the authority may then skim off suspected profits and, as a last resort, even break up companies. These are sharp encroachments on private property. They require sufficient justification and precise rules if the liberal economic order is not to be damaged.
There is a lack of both. The project is politically driven by the recent futile attempt by the cartel watchdogs to prove price fixing to oil companies at the height of the energy crisis. Now the hurdle is simply lowered, from which such evidence is considered to have been provided, in order to get the profits more easily. That smacks of populism.
And in order to somehow secure the matter legally, the cabinet bill contains an opaque hodgepodge of test standards. This suggests clarity where there is none, strengthens bureaucracy and opens up delicate discretionary powers – despite all the assurances of Ministers Habeck and Buschmann. Her eagerness to get an instrument of destruction also has a funny side. Doesn't the traffic light do everything it can to save corporations even if they have to leave the market because of failure? The self-proclaimed "Progressive Coalition" is also entangled in its contradictions with this reform.