During the pandemic and its aftermath, the world witnessed a revival of new narratives and strategies related to industrial policy in a geopolitically competitive environment. We invite Angela Wigger to reflect on the history of competition policy in the EU and provide a deeper understanding of the latest “come-back” of EU industrial policy. She will explain how EU competition policy is enshrined in the shift towards a neoliberal order since the 1980s. Angela will provide a perspective on contemporary competition policy since the financial crisis, reflecting on the role of political institutions like the European Commission.

We will further ask Angela:

How should we understand the concept of “competition” in the context of the EU?
Whose interests do the EU’s competition policy serve, both in terms of industries and geopolitical actors?
Are alternative types of competition policy feasible, and how should we shape them?

Angela Wigger is an associate professor on Global Political Economy at the Radboud University in Nijmegen (the Netherlands). She researches capitalist crises from a historical materialist perspective. Focal points are the geopolitics of EU industrial and antitrust policy, industrial re-shoring attempts, the “competitiveness” fetish, internal devaluation and debt-led accumulation in the age of rentier capitalism.

She wrote “The Politics of European Competition Regulation. A Critical Political Economy Perspective” (with H. Buch-Hansen, 2011, Routledge/RIPE) and published in journals like New Political Economy, New Political Science, RIPE, JCMS, Economy & Society, Globalizations, Geoforum, Capital & Class, Ephemera, and many more.

You can get in touch with Angela via this address: angela.wigger@ru.nl Follow Angela here on X: @AngelaWigger

About Crash Course Economics

Crash Course is a platform designed to open up debate on how we can move out of the current crisis and make the necessary steps towards achieving social, economic, ecological and regenerative justice.

Crash Course is inviting global experts to break down complex issues in lay terms and make them accessible to all so that we can understand how to shape our economic system for a just recovery and future.

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Music credit: "Capital G" by Nine Inch Nails, "Tribal Remix" by Imnotlouis (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 US)