One of the EU’s unsung success stories is cartel busting. Some years ago the Commission began offering leniency to any company prepared to welch on price-fixing arrangements within its industry, and corporations have been queuing up to co-operate. No longer sure they won’t be ratted on by rivals, they want to get their confession in first. It’s not always easy, as EU officials demand proof. A director of German pharmaceuticals firm Degussa had to find a pretext to visit its rival Treuhand in Zurich, so that he could photograph incriminating documents. Degussa subsequently had millions of euros slashed from its fine. Another executive exposed a scam in the airfreight industry: rival firms were pretending to be a gardening club, using words like “asparagus” and “zucchinis” to stand for different tax codes. In the 1990s the EU netted €83m a year in fines: now it nets about #€2bn, all thanks to informants. The methods may be morally dubious, but how heartening it is to see the Commission doing something that actually works. (Les Echos, Paris, reorted in The Week)

Meanwhile, the Obama administration appears to stand by while Facebook takes over Instagram, and (while technically not an ant-trust matter), Bezos-of-the-two-minute-toilet-visit, takes over the Washington Post! If ever there was a moment to cry STOP! this is it. But anti-trust in America has been gutted (in the name of election fund-raising?) and we are unprotected from hyper-aggressive capitalism. The Post has not exactly been politically neutral recently, but at least its journalism has approximated professional. Now another voice of the people disappears, and no doubt most of the staff. It is a disaster. Vive the EU!

How can Epicureans stand by and ignore politics when those we vote for stand by like patsies and watch our freedoms disappear by default and voices of protest and common sense are silenced by tax avoiders and monopolists?

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