European Competition Law provides a wide-ranging review of the European rules relating to competition: restrictive agreements, abuse of a dominant position, impact of intellectual property rights, procedure, merger control, State aid.

European Competition Law

The impact of the economic consequences of decisions in the field of concentrations explains the specificity of the control procedure defined by the Regulation of 20 January 2004  and the Procedural Regulation of 7 April 2004  supplementing it. The control as instituted is a prior control subject to extremely short time periods and carried out by an administrative body, the Commission, acting under the supervision of the EU courts. For a uniform application of EU law, the Commission has exclusive jurisdiction to implement Regulation No 139/2004 subject to the civil consequences where national laws apply, as for restrictive agreements and abuse of dominant position. All concentrations which exceed certain thresholds must be notified to the EU authorities and, in principle, the Commission decision cannot take place more than five months after notification of the transaction. Furthermore, the procedure is only initiated following a preliminary examination (phase I) after which in most cases the procedure is closed. There may also be unofficial contact before the official procedure, as the Commission encourages undertakings to take part in informal and confidential meetings with its representatives following the notification to check whether the proposed transaction really falls within the scope of application of the Regulation and to possibly simplify the notification file that the undertakings have to submit.

EC Regulation No 139/2004 of 20 January 2004, OJ L 24 of 29 January 2004.

EC Regulation No 802/2004 of 7 April 2004, OJ L 133 of 30 April 2004 amended by EC Regulation No 1033/2008 of 20 October 2008, OJ L279 of 22 October 2008.

353. Administrative control