In 2019, the European Commission threw a wrench in the plans of Germany’s Siemens and France’s Alstom to merge—a move that would have established the bloc’s first, homegrown railway giant.

Brussels officials blocked the merger to “protect competition in the European railway industry”—a move that was furiously and repeatedly criticized by both France and Germany, where the two companies are based. Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s then-competition chief, dismissed arguments that the merger would counter the threat in Europe posed by the Chinese state-owned railway company CRRC and would also improve the merged European company’s chances of breaking into the Chinese market. The merger went nowhere.