Competing tests

Following the highly publicised over-turn by the Court of First Instance of three of its merger prohibition decisions, the European Commission has announced a number of proposed changes to its decision-making process. These reforms aim to address the priority areas of the merger control procedure employed by the Commission and the resources available to it. However, no change is envisaged to the substantive 'dominance' test - the Commission has decided that it does not propose to replace it by one seeking to establish whether the effect of a merger will be a "substantial lessening of competition". This bulletin explores some of the implications.

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