Competition policy – annual report 2025

Wording as published by the EP, in English.

1. Amendment 1Rejected

   Paragraph 3 a (new)

   Tabled by Manon Aubry, Marc Botenga, Martin Schirdewan · The Left

   Added: 3a. Stresses that competition policy should not hinder the implementation of an active industrial strategy; calls for the Member States and the EU to pursue an active industrial strategy underpinned by strong public investment, in order to fight social and regional inequality, decarbonise industry and bolster autonomy in key economic sectors, while contributing globally to even and sustainable economic development; underlines that, as Europe faces increasingly frequent and severe heatwaves and climate disasters, competition rules must not prevent Member States from making the public investments and granting the support necessary to protect people, adapt infrastructure, strengthen public services and accelerate the ecological transformation of industry;

2. Amendment 2Rejected

   Paragraph 3 b (new)

   Tabled by Manon Aubry, Martin Schirdewan, Marc Botenga · The Left

   Added: 3b. Stresses that public ownership and public control of companies of 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;

3. Amendment 3Rejected

   Paragraph 13 a (new)

   Tabled by Manon Aubry, Martin Schirdewan, Marc Botenga · The Left

   Added: 13a. Highlights the fact that corporate profits have been important 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 living costs; 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;

4. Amendment 4Rejected

   Paragraph 41 a (new)

   Tabled by Manon Aubry, Jussi Saramo, Martin Schirdewan +1 · The Left

   Added: 41a. Underlines that undertakings in the food and energy supply chains reaped abnormally high profits during the period of high inflation between 2021 and 2023; warns that renewed inflationary pressures, in particular those stemming from the ongoing energy shock, risk once again enabling companies with significant market power in essential goods markets to extract windfall gains from consumers and suppliers, as already reflected in the very high profits recorded by major fossil fuel companies in 2026, with a similar risk of excessive profit extraction in the agri-food sector; stresses that this requires particular vigilance from the Commission and national competition authorities, especially as almost 9 % of people in the EU are unable to afford a proper meal every second day;

5. Amendment 5Rejected

   Paragraph 45 a (new)

   Tabled by Jussi Saramo · The Left

   Added: 45a. Underlines that, over recent years, the EU telecommunications industry has seen increasing consolidation; highlights the fact that more consolidated markets in Europe tend to be characterised by low levels of investment and that increasing consolidation often leads to higher prices1a and lower-quality services for EU consumers; 1a European Commission: Directorate- General for Competition, Protecting competition in a changing world – Evidence on the evolution of competition in the EU during the past 25 years, Publications Office of the European Union, 2024, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2763/089949.

6. Amendment 6Rejected

   Paragraph 46 a (new)

   Tabled by Jussi Saramo, Pasquale Tridico, Manon Aubry · The Left

   Added: 46a. Calls on the Commission, when assessing mergers under EU competition rules, to evaluate potential harm to workers, including from employer concentration and the market power of global digital gatekeepers; underlines the associated risks, such as reduced job mobility, weakened collective bargaining, and downward pressure on wages and working conditions; stresses that competition enforcement must safeguard the social market economy by preventing excessive concentrations of market and labour market power from undermining EU labour standards;

7. Amendment 7Rejected

   Paragraph 50 a (new)

   Tabled by Manon Aubry, Martin Schirdewan, Marc Botenga · The Left

   Added: 50a. 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 and relocations, prohibitions of the distribution of dividends to shareholders and bonuses to upper management, and the obligation to create high-quality, well-paid, unionised jobs with extensive labour participation rights and credible plans for the ecological transformation;

8. Amendment 10Rejected

   Paragraph 9 a (new)

   Tabled by Sarah Knafo · ESN

   Added: 9a. invites the Member States to move away from the logic of subsidies in favour of public procurement reserved for European companies, in order to support their growth and enable them to compete with American and Chinese giants;

9. Amendment 12Rejected

   Paragraph 50 a (new)

   Tabled by Marcin Sypniewski · ESN

   Added: 50a. Expresses concern that extensive aid frameworks linked to the Clean Industrial Deal, the Green Deal and similar initiatives have contributed to higher energy costs and increased regulatory burdens; stresses that such centralised subsidy policies often fail to enhance genuine competitiveness and instead shift costs onto consumers and businesses while expanding bureaucratic oversight at EU level;