20
objective of European merger policy itself. As previously discussed, the MCR’s objective
since its conception has been regulation of the consolidation of firms seeking to compete
in Europe and ultimately, globally, regardless of costs to workers. Evidence of this ‘prime
objective’ of merger regulation was seen recently when Goetrz Drauz, the director of the
MTF, justified no codified role for labour in the MCR by stating that the regulations only
allow for blocking mergers on competition grounds, not “...the employment effects of
deals” (Shishkin and Winestock 2000).
A final factor that explains labour’s insignificant role relates to its power position
vis-à-vis the other actors, namely capital and the MTF. As above, both the MTF and firm
actors were respective of each other, not only because their overall goals were self-
supporting, but also because they represented a threat to each other should a satisfactory
solution to both not be found. However, this was not the situation for labour. On the one
hand, its goals of employment maintenance were particularly at odds with capital and
were irrelevant to the goals of the MTF who desired extension of its institutional power.
On the other, labour did not particularly pose any threat to either party if a solution
inconsistent to its goals were achieved. This suggests that labour was restricted not only
because it was consciously excluded by the other participants (even though it was), but
also because its relative power position was never a threat to other participants who
would have otherwise been forced to negotiate with it.
Conclusions
Analysing both the formulation of the EU’s Merger Control Regulation (MCR) as
well as the implementation of MCR rules during the Nestlé/Perrier merger, the paper has
examined the development of the EU-level merger control policy communities and
attempted to explain this based on private interest theory. The main conclusions are two
fold, where the first relates to contributions of our understanding of different, but related,
communities that may emerge during different stages of the policy process and the
second relates to how the development of such communities can be explained based on
private interest theory.