Norbert Häring has wirtten an excellent piece of how Germany avoids regulating monopolies. Although in other areas the German government is staunchly ordo-liberal, with regards to monopolies it has abaondoned these principles.
How many companies have merged into corporate groups in Germany? We don’t know. The official figures are completely unconvincing. We have a Monopolies Commission which, together with the German Federal Statistical Office, has the legal mandate to monitor market concentration. Germany’s parliament wanted to ensure that the necessary information about the possible emergence of problematic market power is available, only to discover this no longer fits in with the neoliberal ideology inspired by the Chicago School, which has apparently become the ruling ideology at Germany’s Monopolies Commission [OK?].
Corporate Europe Observatory – Is the European Commission preparing a new privatisation push?