On 7th October 2016, the European Commission launched a public consultation in order to seek feedback from citizens, businesses, associations, public authorities and other stakeholders on certain aspects of EU merger legislation. The consultation will remain open until 13th January 2017.
The consultation is focused on: (i) the effectiveness of purely turnover-based thresholds in the EU Merger Regulation, (ii) the treatment of cases that typically do not raise competition concerns and (iii) the referral mechanisms between national competition authorities and the European Commission.
Regarding notification thresholds, the review of a merger falls under the European Commission´s competences where they have EU dimension. This takes place when the turnover of at least two of the merging parties meets the relevant notification thresholds.
The consultation aims at tackling the issue of whether this system is still the most effective way of control. In this sense, the assessment will address suggestions calling for complementing the existing thresholds by other alternative criteria in order to capture some types of transactions in certain sectors, such as digital services and pharmaceuticals. Thus, the Commission seeks to ascertain whether there is a possible enforcement gap under EU merger control.
Concerning the treatment of typically unproblematic cases, currently, there is a simplified procedure in place for cases that generally do not raise competition concerns. The present consultation is targeted at obtaining feedback on the functioning of the simplified procedure. In particular, the objective is to assess whether there is scope for further simplification of the treatment of certain categories of non-problematic cases.
As for referral mechanisms, the European Commission is willing to collect stakeholders´ views on the functioning of the system and on certain procedural and technical aspects of the EU Merger Regulation.
After analyzing the results of the public consultation, the Commission will prepare an evaluation of the relevant procedural and jurisdictional aspects of EU merger control. This will help to decide on possible future reforms in the field of EU merger control.
