Hello and welcome to another M-MLEX podcast. I'm Sam Wilkin, Brussels news editor, and today we're going to talk about EU merger prohibitions, which apparently are like trains. You wait ages and then two come at once. Of course, the blocked Siemens-Alstam merger this week was all about trains, and we'll be talking about that in detail.

But I'd also like to touch on another deal vetoed by the European Commission between two German copper producers.

Here to talk us through both are Nicholas Hurst and Natalie McNellis, who have been following

the process closely here in Brussels.

Hello, Nicholas and Natalie.

Hello.

Hi, Sam.

Okay, first of all, start us off, Natalie,

on the significance of the not one but two merger prohibitions in one day. Yeah, it's true. All eyes

were on Siemens and Olson, and we were waiting to learn about that block. Meanwhile,

the copper deal was trekking along, and it had trouble. And so we got the two

blocks on the same day, but when you look at the two cases, they actually seem both to follow

the principled rules that are laid down in the treaty. So in a way, they're more similar than

they are different. For example, I mean, both of these cases had to do with industries

that are very fundamental to the European economy and in different ways,

because, of course, the railway industry touches everybody's lives.

So you take trains and you pay for the tickets, for example.

But the copper industry, you don't realize how much all of

these inputs are the backbone of our modern technology, for example, in our cell phones, and

also, for example, in electric cars. Apparently, the quantity of copper in an electric car

by far exceeds the copper that we've been using in cars in the past.

So these materials are very important to our everyday lives.

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