If the European Commission does not stymie the proposed purchase by France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom AG of a 20% holding in Sprint Corp, it is almost certain that the US authorities will, but Europe now looks likely to call into question the whole proposed alliance between the French and German state telephone monopolies. European Competition Commissioner Karel Van Miert has told France and Germany that the Commission might block the creation of the Atlas joint venture German officials told Reuter in Brussels on Sunday. The Commission is concerned that the alliance could end up dominating a key sector of the communications market just as Europe is moving towards opening communications to competition by 1998. And without the pan-European alliance between the two, the alliance with Sprint Corp would likely be dead in the water. Van Miert will discuss his concerns with the chief executives of France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom this week. The Atlas venture would initially merge all the two monopolies’ activities or all their services for business customers currently open to competition in European Community markets, and was due to begin by merging the Transpac and Datex-P packet network units. The Commission is said to be responding largely to complaints by British Telecommunications Plc that if the deal was allowed to go through, Europe’s two largest telephone companies would dominate the market for data communications for business.
