The European Commission will this month drop its year-long competition investigation into Intel, the US chipmaker, and guarantee immunity from prosecution to companies that blow the whistle on industrial cartels.
Mr Mario Monti, competition commissioner, announced the moves during a weekend meeting at which he and Mr Charles James, head of the US Justice Department's antitrust division, sought to minimise policy differences and vowed to increase co-operation.
Mr Monti said he had uncovered no evidence to support claims by an unnamed European rival that Intel abused a dominant position in microprocessors. The finding and the Commission's approval last week of the planned merger of Hewlett-Packard and Compaq of the US showed Brussels did not give undue weight to competitors' complaints.
The Commission's veto last year of General Electric's takeover of Honeywell, after the deal was cleared by US antitrust authorities, led to widespread US accusations of precedence being given to competitors' objections over the more favourable views of some of the companies' customers.
Mr Monti said the Commission was seeking to align its policies and analysis more closely with those of the US in several areas, including the granting of "block exemptions" from competition rules, prosecution of cartels and the handling of mergers.
The two sides are seeking to converge on treatment of conglomerate mergers and on timetables and process of merger investigations.
