BRUSSELS, June 11 (Xinhua) -- The European Commission on Tuesday denied a proposed merger between Tata Steel from India and Germany's ThyssenKrupp, saying it would have reduced competition and increased prices for different types of steel without offering adequate remedies.
The Commission had serious concerns that the transaction as notified would have resulted in a reduced choice in suppliers and higher prices for European customers, said a press release published on the website of the Commission.
The remedies offered by the merging companies were not sufficient to address the serious competition concerns and would not have prevented higher prices and less choice for steel customers, added the press release.
"Prohibitions are very rare -- today's decision is only the tenth merger we have blocked over the past ten years. Over the same period, we have cleared more than 3,000 mergers, with over 90 percent cleared unconditionally," said Margrethe Vestager, the EU Commissioner in charge of competition policy, in a following announcement.
EU's merger regulation has been increasingly under attack in recent years, which peaked after the Commission stopped the highly-expected Siemens-Alstom merger in February.
The merger was seen by some in Europe as trying to create a counterweight with China's CRRC, the world's largest supplier of rail transit equipment.
But the Chinese envoy to the EU had said he has "no worries" over Siemens-Alstom merger.
Zhang Ming, head of the Chinese Mission to the EU, said in late January that "in a market economy, we have cooperation and we also have competition. So we do not reject competition."
"Our world provides a very big global market. There is not simply one single player like Alstom, Siemens or the CRRC. We need to cooperate together and compete together so as to provide better services to the whole world," Zhang said at the time.
