• Fight for rule of law, sovereignty define effort to retain “green, digital” focus
• Guersent’s DG successor to be named “as soon as possible” as hunt continues
• New merger guidelines target competitor numbers, consumer choice balance

Seeking safe harbour in a storm of attacks both from outside and within the European Union (EU) – that’s the main image emerging from Teresa Ribera’s description of her first year at the helm of the competition brief at the European Commission (EC).

Executive Vice-President Ribera sat down with this news service yesterday (18 December) for an exclusive interview to reflect on her progress across a broadened EC portfolio encompassing clean, just and competitive transition.

“The year has meant reaffirming the rule of law, reaffirming our sovereignty, and reaffirming the role of the public interest when taking decisions at the European level.”

Ribera summarised 2025 as “a very fruitful year in a very complicated context”.

It has also been a year of squaring the circle. Margrethe Vestager’s 10-year stint as competition chief was characterised by her assertive antitrust enforcement against big tech and pursuit of landmark state aid cases, with mixed results.

The political consensus Ribera faces has forced a shift in emphasis, especially in the context of President Donald Trump’s return to the White House. Caught between mercantilist US and Chinese impulses, the EU is weighing the need for its corporates to innovate and scale against the antitrust tensions that may imply.

Ribera is eager to strike the right balance. Being the public face of the EC’s work in this field “has meant responding to those that thought that under the title of ‘European champions’, we were going to forget about competition as a very relevant driver to ensure [a] level playing field, innovation, consumer protection, and a fair single market in the European Union.”

She points the finger at those who have been “cherry picking” from former European Central Bank president and Italian prime minister Mario Draghi’s EU competitiveness report. This tentpole publication emerged just as Ribera took office and has heavily influenced her mandate.

Those suggesting it is a licence to sacrifice fair market access on the altar of global competitiveness have mischaracterised its nuanced approach, she argued. Progress on innovation could assist newcomers in building and scaling to challenge major incumbents, Ribera said.

“That could allow for a much more competitive Europe – if we combine it with other relevant pieces of the report, which mainly point to the need to keep on driving, deepening, building the single market.”

Ribera batted away recent claims that she is not interested in the competition side of her broad portfolio, saying that the defence of competition policy also requires defence of the rule of law, sovereignty and a “deep understanding of what are the main drivers in any given market, which are green and digital”.

Strikingly, she added these two fields “are under attack from outside the European Union, but I would say that also, in many cases, from insiders”, she said.

And Ribera sees it as her job to view individual cases through a wider lens to ensure focus on decarbonising and Europe’s vision of the digital future.

“There may be people that can afford the luxury to concentrate only on certain cases, or that can consider only what is related to their firm or to their very relevant intellectual research work or to their legal advice to someone, but I think that reality never plays this way,” Ribera continued.

The Spanish politician recalled that her professional background is that of a civil servant, so she respects the craft.

“I know that much of the work that is developed in any given administration is technical but needs the steer of the political level,” she said.

Once again, she yearns to strike a balance – neither ideologue, nor technocrat.

“I wanted to be very clear since the very beginning: I want to know what is going on. I want to learn, and I want to make my comments, and I will always respect the technical approaches – but technicalities are not neutral,” she added.

Life after Guersent

Ribera is having to manage those technicalities in the absence of some deep institutional memory.

One of the events that has most impacted the EC’s competition department in 2025 was the retirement of its top civil servant Olivier Guersent in July, after more than 30 years at the Commission.

Ribera said his absence has been even more felt because he is “quite an appealing personality, out of the traditional cliché that we may have of a Commission civil servant”.

“It’s not only that you counted on a very good professional, it’s that he was a great human being leading a great team”, she said.

The Commission has not yet found his replacement as DG Comp’s director general, something that Ribera said she would like to see “fixed as soon as possible”, because she recognises that “we cannot continue to work on a provisional basis”.

In the interim, Deputy-Director General Linsey McCallum is filling the role of acting DG. Even though Ribera said she would “love her” to take up the post on a permanent basis, McCallum removed herself as a candidate, so the EC is now considering different profiles for the role, through an “open, competitive call”.

Ribera said she “could prefer” a female appointment but said “it is not so obvious that I can get women willing to step into the position.”

Her priority is finding a candidate who is “very sound” and “very respected”, but also someone “with a fresher and broader perspective, which is also important in a moment where we need to defend in a very strong manner our position”, she said.

If it is an official “from the house” – i.e. within DG Comp – it would be someone already known by the team, so the adaptation process would be smooth, Ribera said.

An external appointment may generate excitement in Brussels and beyond, but it would be essential to “identify someone who can bring this fresh air, but at the very same time command the respect of the whole team and [be] strong enough to stand up”, said the EC’s EVP.

“We need this kind of profile”, she added, “someone who is smart enough not to create problems, but smart enough to stand up and defend what we do”.

“In this house, sometimes things take a long time, but I hope to solve it very soon,” she said.

Merger guidelines shake-up

The arrival of a new director general could yet align with completion of the Commission’s horizontal and non-horizontal merger guidelines shake-up. Ribera highlighted this as one of the most important work streams in the first year of her mandate.

This project is ongoing, with a draft anticipated in spring 2026.

She described this as an “interesting intellectual exchange”, both within the DG itself and with the “whole competition family”, including academics, researchers, lawyers and economists specialised in the field, alongside the companies subject to the rules.

“I’m enjoying it because it shakes our minds, and it challenges a little bit the way we frame the questions, or how we can combine different approaches to respond to these challenges”, she said.

“How can we protect innovation but recognize the efficiencies of certain operations? How can we provide positive guidance – in which cases, under which conditions? How can we ensure that that the reading of today’s realities is reflected in guidelines that were adopted more than 20 years ago?”

It is not a quick or an easy exercise, Ribera said, but she struck a confident tone about reaching a positive outcome.

Much in the new guidelines will be “very welcome”, including “an upfront understanding on what we assess and what are the metrics that we use; elements that recognise the importance of innovation, and not just pricing; elements that can help to justify some of the eventual reductions in terms of competitors in a given market; how we can provide a better understanding on the type of efficiencies that could be taken into consideration; [and] an innovation shield for the smaller companies”, she said.

Nonetheless, Ribera is not blind to the fact that guidelines alone are insufficient to address the frustrations of fragmentation within what is supposed to be a single market.

“We cannot substitute the need to remain promoting a much more effective single market and a much more united Europe in many fields – that can apply to energy, that can apply to telecom, that can apply to banking, to many fields.”

In that regard, the elaboration of new guidelines cannot be seen as a mechanism to circumvent the lack of single market, she said.

“If the price to pay is to reduce the options of consumers, higher prices and a threat in terms of eventual innovation because the single market does not work – they are not going to find that in the guidelines,” she warned.

FSR, economic security

Ribera said she was equally determined to hold the line on the Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR) and its enforcement.

Getting to grips with the FSR proved to be another important chapter of her first year, Ribera said. She described the regulation as an important tool to ensure a level playing field between those complying with the highest standards across the EU and foreign companies looking to reap the benefits of the single market without adherence to similar strictures.

Seeking to use this tool in an age of uncertainty is far from easy, with multilaterally managed globalisation giving way to major players more aggressively seeking to control spheres of influence.

In the autumn, Abu Dhabi-controlled energy giant Adnoc launched a scathing attack on what it described as the regulator’s “disproportionate and invasive” requests under the FSR framework as it sought to close its acquisition of German player Covestro.

After much back-and-forth, the EC conditionally approved the transaction, with Adnoc forced to forgo an unlimited financial guarantee from the UAE state and commit to licence Covestro’s IP to rivals.

Managing different cultural norms on how public and private financing can be deployed is a complicating factor, Ribera conceded.

“Enforcement of the Foreign Subsidies Regulation arrives in a moment where, how to say it, the world economics are a little bit complicated. There is an increasing demand to enter into a much more delicate, needed, discussion around economic security.”

The FSR itself does not provide a forum for such dialogue, Ribera said, but “it opens the window to the broader discussion on economic security, to the strategic discussion of what economic security could mean.”

A ‘more constructive’ 2026

Looking to the future, Ribera says she would like to see DG Comp and the Commission as a whole move towards a more proactive, less defensive posture.

“To me, this year has been a year marked by the need to defend and simplify. It has not been a year to propose or to construct”, she said.

“I think that we need that, if we want to ensure that the European project is something appreciated by the citizens; we need to come up with what we propose to do, not what we defend against or what we ‘un-do’.”

Ribera did not elaborate on what she felt the EU had undone, but this month has seen major reversals from previous policy on environmental reporting regulations and plans to phase out sales of petrol and diesel vehicles by 2035. Some might say these moves run counter to the concept of “clean, just transition” in the EVP’s mandate.

Nonetheless, DG Comp has had to strengthen its defence – both from attacks coming from outside, and “so many doubts coming from inside” the EU.

“Competition has been a safe harbour, where we have had the opportunity to stay in peace, building, promoting and having this very relevant, open, intellectual discussion with all the players, all the stakeholders”, Ribera added.

“I think that it is time to say, ‘we keep on building’, to ensure a much better working single market and achieve the promise of the President of the Commission in the State of the Union speech, to come up with proposals to finalize the single market.”

“We cannot say that the agenda of the European Union is ‘un-doing’ or defending itself against attacks. We need a proposal that it is positive, that it is building on our common values,” she said.

“In the general situation of Europe, 2026 should mean something more positive, more constructive,” Ribera concluded.