Vestager’s speech day: Competition commissioner gets political

She told a public broadcasting crowd that culture makes us who we are.

It’s been Nordic speech day at European Commission today.

Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström, from Sweden, has made herself a potential target for Donald Trump by saying his trade policy is “doomed to fail.”

Meanwhile Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, from Denmark, has made not one, but two speeches of note. Normally stuck fending off technical questions from lawyers about antitrust cases, Vestager has been free-ranging on everything from what Danish Christmas would be like without trade, to how creative types can make more successful TV shows based on her career.

If Vestager ends up the liberal spitzenkandidat for European Commission president in 2019, you can say Playbook warned you.

At a conference for pro-EU types at the upmarket Steigenberger hotel in Brussels, Vestager said there is no escape from our globalized world. The key to dealing with globalization is not stopping it, but ensuring it created opportunities for everyone, not just some of us. Vestager pointed to how depressing a Danish Christmas would be without trade: “Beer, pork, cabbage,” but no “cinnamon or oranges … or glühwein.”

Vestager’s colleague, Finland’s Jyrki Katainen, said later in his own speech that Nordic countries are proof that globalization does not have to lead to greater inequality.

Thinking about the legacy of the Juncker Commission, which has known nothing but crisis, Vestager said she wants their work to be remembered as “common sense” and for the public to support an “optimistic yet pragmatic way forward.”

Monday evening in the European Parliament, Vestager told a public broadcasting crowd that culture makes us who we are, and for the most part pesky competition rules need not apply.

For Vestager, European culture should be free to focus on being a civilizing force, with public subsidies if necessary. “Because by getting to know each other better, we become better neighbors. And that has to start with the things that make us who we are. It has to start with our culture,” she said.

Vestager lamented that, on average, European films are released in just two countries, and even those cross-border productions tend to get released in fewer than five countries. To that end she wants to end contractual prohibitions on companies in Europe serving potential customers outside their home markets.