European Union

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Margrethe Vestager, the Commission's competition chief, and her mobile phone

It often seems that the European Commission’s only real game plan regarding Brexit is to hope that there won’t be any unfortunate spats involving the UK right in the middle of campaign season. That won’t be possible, and there is every sign an imminent decision over whether to allow consolidation among British mobile phone network operators could turn into a political football.

Margrethe Vestager, the EU antitrust chief, has been known to argue that cutting the number of players from four to three in any one market saps competition and, in the case of telecommunications, allows companies to increase phone bills. Her hard-line stance on a 4-to-3 Danish telecoms merger last year suggests she’s also looking to block the £10.5bn purchase by CK Hutchison’s Three of Telefónica’s O2. Or at the very least, she will impose stinging concessions.

In less combustible times, the politics would be more navigable. Ofcom, the UK regulator, has already announced it is hostile to the deal. Just this morning, Britain’s competition and markets authority weighed in, writing to Ms Vestager that the merger a “significant impediment to effective competition” in the UK’s mobile phone market. Ms Vestager could quite easily argue that she represents the sort of “more competitive Europe” that David Cameron, the British prime minister, says he wants. She could argue she is simply protecting the little guy from big corporates who will put his phone bills up.

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  © REMKO DE WAAL/AFP/Getty Images

Back in 2005, it was Jean-Claude Juncker who caught the mood after Dutch and French voters spurned a draft EU constitution. “Europe is not in crisis: it is in deep crisis,” he declared. He has gone from Luxembourgish premier to European Commission president since then – and the Dutch are back to saying No. This time team Juncker relayed that the president was just “sad” about the rejection of the Ukraine trade deal. And for europhiles that pretty much sums it up.

This has been a long journey. Referendums on European issues, from the 1970s on, largely acted as a rite of passage: membership, enlargement, monetary union. They then morphed into more wide ranging political guarantees for eurosceptic voters (in Denmark, Britain or France) wary of where pro-European politicians may lead them. Some would call them a reality check.

More recently they have grown to be not just domestic political matters, but negotiating tools or instruments of coercion abroad. This is the weaponisation of referendums and a few EU leaders have been accused of the tactic: Greece’s Alexis Tsipras over bailout terms, Britain’s David Cameron to win a better deal, and Hungary’s Viktor Orban over migration quotas.