Richard said he met Vestager, the EU's competition commissioner, along with his counterpart at Deutsche Telekom last Monday. Her tough approach toward competition rules led to the collapse of several mergers and the creation of new players in several national telecoms markets.

"We should not expect any major inflexion in the EU commission's approach toward in-market consolidation," Richard told analysts in Paris.

"But at the same time, she told us very clearly that she was very strongly in favour of network sharing and network consolidation, which is a form of consolidation."

He added: "The second point is that she told us that everything that is pan-European will be strongly supported by the EU Commission."

Richard reiterated there were no talks of any kind going on with Deutsche Telekom over a potential merger, following renewed market rumours for such a deal.

(Reporting by Mathieu Rosemain; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta)

Stocks treated in this article : Bouygues, Orange, Iliad, Deutsche Telekom AG, Altice Europe N.V.