Competition policy – annual report 2024

Wording as published by the EP, in English.

1. Amendment 1Rejected

   Paragraph 8 a (new)

   Tabled by The Left

   Added: 8a. Expresses its profound disapproval at the decision by the ArcelorMittal Group to cut up to 1 400 jobs in western Europe, almost half of them in France; deplores the plan to relocate some of these jobs to India and Poland; stresses that the group nevertheless made a profit of EUR 1.3 billion and paid out more than EUR 1.5 billion to its shareholders in 2024; recalls that over recent years ArcelorMittal has received several billion euros in public support from the European Union and from Member States, including France; calls on the Commission and the Member States to take measures to ensure that companies benefiting from public support cannot, as ArcelorMittal is doing, close industrial sites, draw up redundancy plans, relocate their activities, pay dividends to their shareholders and renounce their green transition objectives; considers that current European law significantly hampers the ability of Member States to bring strategic companies or sectors of public interest under public control; calls therefore on the Commission to propose a revision of EU competition rules; urges the French government to nationalise the company in order to protect workers and preserve steelmaking as a strategic industry;

2. Amendment 2Rejected

   Paragraph 4 a (new)

   Tabled by Sarah Knafo · ESN

   Added: 4a. Considers that fair and equitable competition within the common market begins with ensuring that imported goods and products, particularly agricultural ones, comply with the norms and standards imposed on goods produced in Europe;

3. Amendment 6Rejected

   Paragraph 3 a (new)

   Tabled by Martin Schirdewan, Marc Botenga, Hanna Gedin +2 · The Left

   Added: 3a. Stresses that public ownership and public control of companies with strategic significance to the transition to a socially just and climate-neutral economy are vital to effectively guide, support and accelerate this transition and develop more democratic forms of production; calls on the Commission and the Member States to create an EU framework to facilitate public ownership and public control in such strategic economic sectors;

4. Amendment 7Rejected

   Paragraph 3 b (new)

   Tabled by Martin Schirdewan, Hanna Gedin, Jonas Sjöstedt +1 · The Left

   Added: 3b. Stresses that competition policy should not hinder the implementation of an active industrial strategy; calls for the EU and the Member States to pursue an active industrial policy underpinned by strong public investment to fight social and regional inequality, decarbonise industry and bolster autonomy in key economic sectors, while contributing globally to even and sustainable economic development;

5. Amendment 8Rejected

   Paragraph 3 c (new)

   Tabled by Pasquale Tridico · The Left

   Added: 3c. Stresses that industrial policy cannot be confined to the scope of competition policy, which has so far been the EU’s primary focus; underlines that this narrow approach is no longer sufficient in the light of today’s global challenges and the urgent need to reduce the technology gap with the United States and China; calls for a renewed EU industrial policy centred on the identification of strategic sectors and technologies and aimed at achieving clearly defined environmental, economic and social objectives of public interest; notes that competition rules alone are inadequate to address the deep crisis affecting key sectors such as the automotive sector, which is leading to significant job losses; urges the Commission to develop industrial policy tools to support this strategic sector and the transition to sustainable mobility, in addition to employment protection instruments such as a scheme similar to SURE, which should be accompanied by clear social and environmental conditionalities for beneficiary companies;

6. Amendment 10Rejected

   Paragraph 11 a (new)

   Tabled by Martin Schirdewan, Marc Botenga, Hanna Gedin +2 · The Left

   Added: 11a. Stresses that State aid should not amount to a transfer of public wealth to the private sector; calls on the Commission and the Member States to ensure that strict social and environmental conditions are imposed on companies receiving State aid, including prohibitions on closures, production cutbacks, relocations and the distribution of dividends to shareholders and bonuses to upper management, and the obligation to create high-quality, highly paid, unionised jobs with extensive labour participation rights and credible plans for the ecological transformation;

7. Amendment 11Rejected

   Paragraph 14

   Tabled by Martin Schirdewan, Manon Aubry · The Left

   … that under the Treaty, the Commission is empowered to address exploitative abuses; Added: highlights that corporate profits have been significant contemporary drivers of inflation; stresses that profit-driven inflation, or greedflation, should be met with appropriate interventions, such as windfall taxes, price controls or antitrust proceedings, in order to mitigate its socially harmful impact on the cost of living; calls on the Member States and the Commission to immediately introduce permanent windfall profit taxes to combat profit-driven inflation in all sectors and to redistribute windfall profits to low-income households;

8. Amendment 12Rejected

   Paragraph 18 a (new)

   Tabled by Martin Schirdewan · The Left

   Added: 18a. Deplores the significant number of cases in which large companies that have received substantial amounts of State aid are simultaneously announcing large-scale redundancies while distributing dividends to their shareholders; is deeply concerned that, in Germany, the 40 corporations listed on the DAX received public money of about EUR 35 billion between 2016 and 2023, while simultaneously earning billions in private profits; deplores the fact that Volkswagen is planning to cut more than 35 000 jobs, even though it received public support of over EUR 6 billion between 2016 and 2023 and distributed about EUR 22 billion to shareholders between 2021 and 2023; calls on the Member States to prohibit companies that receive substantial amounts of State aid from making mass redundancies and to ensure that their workers have effective participation rights in strategic company decisions;

9. Amendment 13Rejected

   Paragraph 38

   Tabled by Pasquale Tridico · The Left

   … the delayed pass-through of the rapid monetary policy tightening to deposit rates; Added: expresses concern about the ultra-privileged rate on the excess liquidity of banks deposited into the European Central Bank (ECB), which allows profits to accumulate; highlights that the distribution of these windfall profits to banks has been unequal across Member States; calls on the Commission to propose measures to ensure that ECB policies do not disproportionately benefit certain banks or increase inequalities between euro area countries; proposes the consideration of policy tools to mitigate such distortions in bank profitability, including an increase of unremunerated reserve requirements, as suggested by the Governor of the Austrian Central Bank, to absorb excess liquidity without further remunerating it1a; notes that several Member States have introduced windfall taxes on banks’ extraordinary profits to address these disparities; encourages the ECB to assess the implications of such measures and explore coordinated approaches to ensure a balanced and equitable financial environment across the euro area; 1a https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/ecb-needs-stop-subsidizing-banks-holzmann-says-2024-04-03/ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-20/ecb-s-holzmann-renews-idea-of-tenfold-hike-in-minimum-reserves?

10. Amendment 14Rejected

    Paragraph 39 a (new)

    Tabled by Martin Schirdewan, Manon Aubry · The Left

    Added: 39a. Regrets the Commission’s in-depth investigations into State aid rules in the cases of the public rail freight operators Fret SNCF and DB Cargo; regrets that the investigations put pressure on the operators to implement restructuration plans, which imply reducing activities and costs in order to comply with market logic, whereas freight transport should be a public service; laments that the restructuring has led to the loss of hundreds of jobs in Germany and France; calls on the Commission to consult the trade unions and to guarantee workers’ rights in such cases; reminds the Commission of the objectives set by the Sustainable and Intelligent Mobility Strategy under the European Green Deal, which aims to double rail freight transport and reduce overall transport emissions by 90 % by 2050; stresses that competition policy should not hinder progress in the green transition, for which rail freight transport is key; calls for a reform of competition rules on these grounds;