As the Bush administration makes clear its contempt for enforcing the laws designed to promote competition, the European Commission is taking up the charge. See this story on Intel (Mercury News) and this one on DVD pricing (Reuters), among other recent cases.
One place they may help a great deal is with Microsoft. Any day now, a U.S. federal appeals court will probably overturn the remedies ordered by Judge Jackson in the big antitrust case. The court may even kill his rulings altogether. If they do the latter they’ll be overruling antitrust law itself. If it’s the former, they’ll ensure that any remedies come far too late to have any impact.
The European antitrust folks aren’t letting the case go away. They’re still looking at our favorite monopolist, and from all indications they’re not going to let it just drop even if the U.S. Justice Department’s Antitrust Division does.
At least some cops remain on the beat.