Good news as 2007 draws to a close – the year was the most successful on record for the European Commission’s work fining companies for behaving anti-competitively – 3.3 billion Euro in total, so more than 2% of the EU’s annual income. Handelsblatt has a good article about it (in German). Siemens, Thyssen-Krupp and Microsoft have all been fined upwards of 400 million Euro each. Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes does not make a fuss about the work that she is doing, but steadily the Commission gets to work, sector by sector, and roots out anti-competitive behaviour. Surely her work should be something that even eurosceptics in the Tory party should be happy about? But that would mean they had to lessen their blinkered approach.