Goodlatte to European Parliament: Protect Free Competition, Don’t Punish American Tech Companies
Washington, D.C. – Chairman Goodlatte submitted a letter to leaders in the European Parliament to urge them to protect free competition and to abstain from unfair punishment of American technology companies with offices in Europe. The European Parliament is scheduled to vote on a joint resolution on November 27th calling for the forced break up of Google’s business units in Europe.
In the letter, Chairman Goodlatte expresses concern about the joint resolution and urges the European Parliament to “continue to advocate for our shared principles of transparent, fair, predictable, and fact and legal-based antitrust enforcement.
Read more in the text of the letter below:
Dear Sirs and Madams:
Protecting an open marketplace with free competition among market participants, domestic and abroad, has long been one of the pillars of United States antitrust enforcement efforts. We recognize that transparent, fair, predictable, and fact and legal-based antitrust enforcement yields innovation and creativity that benefit free markets and consumers alike.
The United States consistently strives to enforce our antitrust laws in this manner and, as elected representatives, it is one of our duties to ensure that our antitrust enforcement agencies uphold these principles in their enforcement efforts. We also encourage our antitrust enforcement agencies to advocate for these antitrust principles with our international allies, including the European Union.
We were therefore troubled to learn that some European elected representatives are encouraging antitrust enforcement efforts that appear to be motivated by politics, rather than grounded in factual and legal principles. We believe that antitrust enforcement should be applied independent of politics and firmly rooted in our shared international principles. Policies that run counter to these principles undermine our free markets and ultimately harm both our businesses and our consumers.
We urge you to continue to advocate for our shared principles of transparent, fair, predictable, and fact and legal-based antitrust enforcement. We look forward to continue working together on these important goals.