EU antitrust chief: We're not biased against US companies

Europe’s top antitrust regulator forcefully pushed back against claims that its pursuit of companies including Google and Amazon was motivated by anti-American bias. “As I said, the nationality of a company is a nonrelevant fact,” European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said. “Nonetheless, some claim that when our casework involves giants like Apple or Google, [it] is an evidence of bias. But this is a fallacy.”

She said that the European Union’s focus was instead the “result of fair-handed application of the law.” Vestager argued that while US companies were “often involved” in investigations of the tech space, it was not unlike Japanese car giants being involved in cases related to the auto business. “Statistics on merger interventions also confirms that there is no geographical bias,” she said. “And these are the facts.”