EU Commission simplifies Merger Regulation proceures

The European Commission has adopted a package to simplify its procedures for reviewing concentrations under the EU Merger Regulation.

By increasing the market share thresholds, the Commission has made a broader scope for the simplified merger review. The European Commission considers that its proposed changes could allow up to 60-70% of all notified mergers to qualify for review under the simplified procedure, which is about 10% more than today.

Further, the amount of information required for notifying transactions are reduced for all mergers and the pre-notification process is shortened and simplified.

These measures aim to allow more efficiency by reducing workload and costs for those transactions that have to be notified to the Commission but do not raise any competition law issues.

These changes will apply as of 1 January 2014. For further information see http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-1214_en.htm