On Wednesday, July 10th, 2019, M-Lex hosted a discussion between Tomaso Valletti, the outgoing

chief connoisse at DG Competition at the European Commission, and Christina Kaffara, who heads

up European competition at Economic Consultancy Charles Rivers Associates.

The events was moderated by myself, Nicholas Hurst, a journalist

with Emlex, and what follows is a recording of the whole session. I'm delighted to kick

off the valedictory tour event this evening. My name is Nicholas Hurst. I'm a reporter

with M-Dex in Brussels. It was our editor-in-chief, Lewis

Cross, that was going to moderate today's panel, but he's unfortunately been laid low and is

very disappointed not to be here. But yeah, I get to pick up for him.

As you all know, Tomaso Valletti is arriving at the end of his three-year stint in Brussels

as the chief economist at DG Comp.

He needs a little introduction. I think the interesting thing to notice that he's had

unparalleled access for an outsider to the inner workings of DG Comp. And the idea for this

evening hopefully is that we can extract some insight about how that works and perhaps give him

a stage so that he can make his exit from the Brussels stage in style and hopefully with a bit of

aplomb. The idea for the idea is that this is going to run for about an hour.

There will be a chance for questions at the end or statements if anyone wants to intervene.

But of course if you have anything to say about the discussions as it's going on,

please don't hesitate to stick your hand up,

interject verbally, throw a piece of paper in our direction, and we're happy

to take any comments.

Christina Kaffara is going to help lead the discussion.

...