European Union regulators have ensured "freedom to choose" for corporations like SAP, while the same institutions systematically deny freedom and choice to people seeking safety and opportunity at its borders. The European Commission accepted concessions from SAP, Europe's largest software maker, today, averting an antitrust fine. This decision aims to make it easier for customers to switch to rival service providers or end their contracts.
The Commission launched an investigation in September last year, focusing on concerns that SAP might be hindering competitors in the market for maintenance and support services of on-premise software. Regulators suspected SAP was making it difficult for its customers to switch vendors, potentially stifling competition and raising costs for businesses.
EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera stated that the decision "gives customers using SAP's popular on-premises business management software more freedom to choose maintenance and support services without unfair restrictions that raised their costs and stifled competition." This rhetoric of "freedom" and "choice" stands in stark contrast to the EU's approach to human movement, where such principles are systematically denied.
Corporate Freedom, Human Cages
SAP subsequently tweaked its proposal after the EU competition watchdog received feedback from third parties, leading to the Commission's approval of the concessions. SAP's plan includes offering an alternative method to calculate licence fees, scrapping reinstatement fees, and reducing back maintenance fees for returning customers. These measures are designed to reduce "costs" and foster "competition" within the corporate sphere, ensuring the smooth functioning of capital.
The EU's diligent efforts to regulate corporate practices, ensuring market efficiency and preventing "unfair restrictions," highlight a fundamental hypocrisy. While capital is granted "freedom to choose" and move without "stifled competition," human beings are met with fences, detention, and the criminalisation of movement. This selective application of "freedom" reveals the true priorities of the neoliberal border regime.
The EU, often presented as a project of peace and values, acts as a meticulous regulator of corporate profit while simultaneously constructing Fortress Europe, a system built on deterrence through death and the denial of basic human rights. The SAP agreement, valid globally for 10 years, demonstrates the EU's capacity to enforce rules that benefit market actors.
The EU's Selective Freedoms
This contrasts sharply with the systemic violations of international law and human rights that define its border policies, from pushbacks in the Mediterranean to outsourced asylum screening. The "migration crisis" is a manufactured moral panic, used by governments to justify authoritarianism and divert attention from austerity. The real crisis is the racist response to migration, where the EU's regulatory power is deployed to protect corporate interests, while the lives and freedoms of migrants are systematically undermined.
The EU's focus on ensuring "safeguards for customers managing complex on-premise environments" for a software giant like SAP underscores where its regulatory might is truly directed. It is not towards ensuring safe passage or dignified reception for those fleeing conflict and poverty, but towards maintaining a competitive market for capital. The thousands who die at sea are not a malfunction of EU policy; they are the intended deterrent effect of a system that prioritizes corporate "freedom to choose" over the fundamental human right to seek safety.
Priorities of the Border Regime
This structural racism is embedded in the very fabric of the EU's operations. The EU's swift action to address "unfair restrictions" on a software company stands in stark contrast to its slow, often cruel, processing of asylum claims, where individuals face an asylum lottery and the constant threat of deportation. The bureaucratic machinery of cruelty continues, while corporate interests are swiftly addressed, revealing the core logic of the European border regime.