(Bloomberg) -- The European Union will always evaluate networks’ independence carefully, antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said amid growing tension around Italy’s project to merge its wholesale broadband operators.

“The question is of course: Is that an independent wholesaler? Or would a wholesaler also have specific ties vertically to retailers?,” Vestager said on Friday, stressing this was the EU’s general policy and not a comment on specific companies. “That would be an important competition assessment and that would be our general approach no matter what country it would be concerned with.”

Telecom Italia SpA, Italy’s largest phone carrier and the country’s former telecommunications monopoly, aims to merge its network with that of smaller rival Open Fiber SpA, a state-backed wholesale carrier. The creation of a single national broadband network is a priority for Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, who wants to speed up the country’s fiber rollout while avoiding to duplicate investments.

Telecom Italia Chief Executive Officer Luigi Gubitosi has made it clear that his company will remain the majority owner of the merged network once it becomes Italy’s single provider of wholesale fixed-line broadband access.

EU officials are wary of a wholesale-only carrier being controlled by the country’s biggest communication service provider, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg earlier this week. EU competition officials led by Vestager are concerned that a proposed combination of Telecom Italia’s landline network and Open Fiber would create a monopoly, reversing two decades of deregulation, people added.

Vestager refused to comment on the report, saying there isn’t a final plan yet for her to discuss.

Italian Finance Minister Roberto Gualtieri “has regular contacts with Margrethe Vestager and EU competition officials and they spoke recently. There is no awareness of a potential EU veto on the plan,” a Treasury official said on Thursday. “There is instead, a common shared goal of providing Italy with modern digital infrastructure.”

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