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The European union, from the economic point of view, has developed the economic and monetary union: the monetary part is embodied by the Euro, the economic part is embodied by the great European Unique Market. But the European Unique Market, that is the concrete life from the economic point of view of by now 25 States members, would not have a lot of sense if it were an unique market under conditions of competition. In fact the unique market has been created because the general efficiency of the European production to advantage of the consumers, increases particularly, if can freely be made choices of exchange and production on this great market, that concerns by now 450 million Europeans. But because this happens, therefore because the great market both to the height of the promises and contributes to the wellness of the Europeans, it needs the conditions of competition. For this reason, since when the European union, the European Community, was born with the 1957 Rome Treaty, a politics of the competition has been anticipated. In the Treaty has been established that the enterprises and States owed both to follow to the principles of the competition. Particularly, this means for the enterprises the prohibition to stipulate among them clear or secret accords as the "cartello" that accords fixation of the prices among enterprises that injure to the competition and harm the consumers holding generating taller prices of those that the free game of the competition would determine. And it is also made prohibition to the enterprises, above all when they are great or huge to misuse of their possible dominant position,; and it has also been established subsequently that when two or more enterprises want to blend, to melt, has to get the preventive authorization from the European union. But also for States are anticipated measures, a discipline of the aids, of benefits from States to the enterprises, otherwise with each State that financially sustains the enterprises is clear that the competition in the great unique market would be distorted from this artificial factor. The authority that has the assignment to guard that these rules are respected it is the European Commission, that has inside a member specifically destined to manage the politics of the competition. This is the position that, in the five years of the Prodi Commission, is been my turn to cover: the exercise of these powers, that are very strong, is one of the fields in which the Commission doesn't have only the faculty to propose directives, that then the Parliament and the Council will owe to deliberate, but also the power of direct intervention on the enterprises, for example also inflicting very remarkable fines, if they make some "cartello" or they misuse their dominant position. Last year the Commission has imposed a pecuniary penalty of 497 million of European to the Microsoft, believing that it had misused of its own dominant position. Also toward States, I remember for example one of the sourrest games of dialogue and also of clash, then resolved in consensual way, when the European Commission has imposed to Germany to stop giving guarantees of State to the German public banks. This was a powerful element of distorsion of the market that had been existing for one century and that the action of the European Commission has eliminated. So, this is a politics where the Commission has the last word, excepted fo the appeal to the European Court of justice, and that it is an important component contained in "E" of the UEM, that is in the economic part of the Economic and Monetary Union.
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