June 17, 2026, 16:27 GMT | Insight
Companies have dropped potentially illegal behavior because the
European Commission was moving to impose interim injunctions, according to the EU's former top competition official. Olivier Guersent said he'd failed to deploy the tool more often when he led the regulator's antitrust division, but that it had still had an effect even without formal decisions.
Companies have dropped potentially illegal behavior because the European Commission was moving to impose interim injunctions, the EU's former top competition official said.
Olivier Guersent said he had failed to deploy the tool more often when he led the regulator's antitrust division, but it had still had an effect even without formal decisions.
"In the few cases we've tried, the parties dropped the ball when they saw that we were just about to adopt an interim measure decision, which in a way means it works," Guersent, who was director-general of DG Competition until last summer, said at a conference* on Wednesday.
In 2025, the commission was close to imposing interim measures on
Lufthansa over feeder flights, but it dropped the case (see
here). Last week, the commission adopted a rare intervention against
Meta Platforms, ordering it to allow AI chatbots to distribute their services across WhatsApp, pending a full antitrust probe.
This power exists under EU law and is seen as a key way to intervene swiftly to protect markets. But the legal complexity means it's been used only rarely.
Guersent noted one previous decision against
Broadcom in 2019, which resulted in the company voluntarily changing contracts to fall into line with EU law.
After that case, Guersent said he'd advocated adopting many more interim-measure decisions, but after five years in office, there'd been none.
"That's probably the biggest failure of my career," he said.
He joked that the recent decision against Meta, which came after he left office, had "seriously got on my nerves."
"I wish [the commission] would continue and adopt more, because that's one way to do it," he said, noting the benefits for speed.
* European Competition Forum Midsummer Meeting, Brussels, June 16-18, 2026.
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