French-German policy-drome: an end in itself

Typical megalomaniacal desire to regulate and control things they don't understand, and won't let private citizens do anything about... At least they have an occasional critic:

"Monti is of the opinion that "the French debate is wrong", and that "the debate is limited to France and Germany". Moreover, he stated that competition could facilitate, rather than prevent, merger and acquisition activity across European borders. Indeed, in his view, markets do open up and only a few mergers have been turned down by the Commission.

Monti's colleague Frits Bolkestein expressed similar views. In a recent article in the Financial Times, he attacked France and Germany for their approach to industrial policy, saying that the two governments used current fears about deindustrialisation as an excuse to reinforce state interventionism "