The concern of the Commission is that a merger between the companies could control the market for downloading music from the internet.
Alexander Schaub, another head competition official of the Commission, said yesterday at a conference that regulators must act decisively to prevent the emergence of a small group of dominant high tech companies. He added, “The competition authorities must adopt a carefully balanced approach to avoid interfering with the self-regulating dynamics of competing companies while ensuring we protect technological innovation to preserve competition to the full.”
The Commission will also soon rule on the merger between America Online and Time Warner.
The European Commission must vet all deals involving companies with combined world turnover of at least five billion euros (£3 billion) and where at least two of them have sales within the EU of at least 250 million euros (£153 billion).