Once upon a time in Brussels: EU picks Tarantino for top competition job

The European Commission finally has a new chief competition economist, more than a year after competition chief Margrethe Vestager’s first choice was forced out.

Emanuele Tarantino, an economics professor at Rome’s Luiss University in Rome, will be the third Italian to take on the role which has grabbed attention due to its potential influence over how competition policy could spur industrial growth.

The Commission didn’t say when he would start his three-year term. It did say that Tarantino’s track record advising governments and private institutions “makes him highly suitable to advise on the economic aspects relating to the policy development and enforcement of competition rules in the EU.”

The EU’s competition unit hasn’t had a formal chief economist since Pierre Régibeau retired last year. Fiona Scott Morton, a star U.S. academic, was selected for the post but withdrew after heavy French criticism for hiring an American to rule on sensitive EU investigations that could involve U.S. Big Tech firms.

Tarantino is already a member of the Commission’s economic advisory group on competition policy. He also advises Spain’s central bank and has roles as a researcher at Italy’s Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance and at the Centre for Economic Policy Research in the U.K.

Some EU lawmakers hit out at Vestager’s move to fill the three-year post so soon before she leaves.

One of Tarantino’s predecessors, Tommaso Valletti, was quick to congratulate him, saying on X that he’d just nabbed the “best possible job in the world.”