Teresa Ribera’s appointment as European Union executive vice-president for a Clean, Just and Competitive Transition places her in the hybrid job of EU competition chief, net-zero emissions architect and economic transformer.
Replacing Margrethe Vestager, European Commission (EC) vice-president for a Europe Fit for the Digital Age and Competition, Ribera is currently Spain’s third vice-president and minister for the Ecological Transition. Her new position gives her a wide remit: overseeing the EU’s clean energy transition and antitrust enforcement alongside modernization of competition policy.
Whether the overlapping roles will make for effective action, or an insurmountable burden, remains to be seen, but Ribera is tasked with leading the EU toward decarbonization while improving its competitiveness, drawing on recommendations made in a recent report by former Italian Prime Minister and European Central Bank President Mario Draghi.
The Draghi report suggests Ribera faces a formidable task. No EU company with a market capitalization over €100 billion has been set up from scratch in the last 50 years, while all six US companies with a valuation above €1 trillion have been created in this period.
Between 2008 and 2021, 30% of “unicorns” founded in Europe relocated their headquarters abroad, the vast majority moving to the US. In 2021, EU companies spent about half as much on research and investment as a share of GDP as US companies. The EU has only three research institutions ranked among the top 50 globally, whereas the US has 21 and China 15. While she brings decades of policy experience managing Spain’s green transformation, which makes her well-placed to push forward the European Green Deal, Ribera faces a challenge finding “a new approach to competition policy: one that is more supportive of companies scaling up in global markets, allows European businesses and consumers to reap all the benefits of effective competition and is better geared to our common goals,” according to her mission letter from EC President Ursula von der Leyen.