The new provision should allow competition in local markets to be assessed by national competition authorities, which are best placed to perform this role, thereby sparing the (limited) resources of the Merger Task Force.

However, it could result in practice in the Merger Regulation’s existing turnover jurisdictional test being replaced by a test under which competence is allocated either to the Commission or the national authorities according to the geographical dimension of the market affected by the transaction.

This would also decrease legal certainty regarding the approval deadlines, which in case of referral might be significantly longer than the one month normally required for a ‘first phase’ approval by the Commission. In fact, on top of the six weeks in which the Commission has to decide whether to refer the transaction, there would be the added national deadlines for approval (in Italy, up to 75 days).

Salvatore Lamarca
Freshfields
Milan