The postwar immigration of antitrust to Europe followed a middle course. During and after the cold war the European Community accepted a degree of bureaucratic interventions into the market to promote social welfare that was closer to the Japanese and Australian forms than to those of the United States. The European Community nonetheless adopted antitrust more readily than did Japan, primarily because of the overriding commitment to market integration. Still, envisioning the rise of antitrust in Europe as resulting from the subordination of nationalist ideology and political contingency to Americanized efficiency-seeking political economy raises significant questions. The argument that follows is that throughout the postwar era of uneven economic growth, the public discourse constituting competition policy not only shaped European market integration, but also engendered a competition consciousness promoting the broader goal of equal treatment among private as well as public enterprises. This in turn reinforced bureaucratic independence and discretion. Except for giving much attention to the German system and passing reference to the British, French, and Polish regimes, the following discussion does not focus on the axis of development: the interaction between national and European Union (i.e., integration) experience. Rather, the story emphasizes the core institutional, political, and ideological interactions which enabled the European Commission to impose upon business stronger social welfare accountability as compared to U.S. antitrust.