European Commissioner Mario Monti has known better days. On Oct. 25, Europe's high priest of competition and his Brussels-based Merger Task Force―a 75-strong group of lawyers and economists that reviews and occasionally disallows proposed mergers in the European Union―suffered their third reversal in less than five months from Europe's second-highest court. Worse, it was the second slap in a single gruesome week. Before then, the task force had been overruled only twice in its 12-year history. For the legendary trustbuster who blocked General Electric Co.'s bid to buy Honeywell International and has taken on software giant Microsoft Corp., this setback is a watershed. True, nothing in the rulings by the Luxembourg-based Court of First Instance questioned Monti's authority or weakened the laws under which he operates. But the political effect was obvious: In its rapid-fire reversals, the court put the EU'S competition gang on notice that their swashbuckling days are over. "It was a major blow to the institution," says Alec J. Burnside, a Brussels-based partner with British law firm Linklaters & Alliance, which does work for Microsoft.
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机译：欧洲专员马里奥·蒙蒂（Mario Monti）的日子更好。 10月25日，欧洲竞争激烈的牧师和他设在布鲁塞尔的Merger Task Force（一支由75名律师和经济学家组成的小组，审查并偶尔禁止在欧盟进行拟议的兼并）在不到五个月的时间内遭受了第三次逆转欧洲第二高的法院。更糟糕的是，这是一个令人毛骨悚然的一周中的第二个耳光。在此之前，该工作组在其12年的历史中仅被推翻了两次。对于传奇的重磅炸弹制造者来说，挫折是一个分水岭。没错，设在卢森堡的原讼法庭的裁决中，没有任何质疑蒙蒂的权威或削弱蒙蒂经营业务的法律。但是政治影响是显而易见的：在迅速撤退的过程中，法院通知了欧盟的竞争团伙，他们的放荡时代已经结束。 “这是对该机构的重大打击，”英国律师事务所Linklaters＆Alliance驻布鲁塞尔的合伙人Alec J. Burnside说。
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