Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Recent Developments in EU Merger Remedies

2020; Oxford University Press; Volume: 11; Issue: 5-6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/jeclap/lpaa033

2041-7772

Christopher C. H. Cook, Sven Frisch, Vladimír Novák,

Diverse Legal and Medical Studies

This survey covers the Commission’s 2019 merger remedy cases, including subsequent developments in those cases through 29 May 2020. The year 2019 marked the end of Margrethe Vestager’s first term and the beginning of her unprecedented second term as EU Competition Commissioner. The Commission continued its recent history of strict, careful merger remedy enforcement despite political calls from some Member States for a loosening of the EU merger control system in the aftermath of the Siemens/Alstom prohibition, which prevented the emergence of a ‘European Champion’. The numbers show that during her first term, Commissioner Vestager was a more strict merger enforcer than her predecessor Joaquín Almunia, with materially higher intervention rates. Over the same period, the Commission established a demanding, yet pragmatic, approach to remedy design and implementation, while focusing more closely on compliance. Four features of this approach were exhibited last year. Following...