a regulatory minefield. When Competition Commissioner Mario Monti made it clear that his officials were recommending a veto of mergers between two American operators because of major overlaps in long-distance services and Web infrastructure, Ebbers appealed to the US Department of Justice's anti-trust chief Joel Klein. "They played the American political card and warned against destroying the Nineties miracle of choice and innovation," said someone involved in the talks. "As you can see, it did not work."The strategy failed, say EU officials, because the Commission's competition directorate-general has learned lessons from the debacle over the merger between the world's number-one plane-maker Boeing and its only serious US rival in the civil aircraft field, McDonnell Douglas back in 1996. Then, former Competition Commissioner Karel van Miert was seen to be waging a personal war against a link-up that was seen, in the White House at least, as an essential consolidation in a strategically crucial industry.