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Robert O’Donoghue, David Parker, Mar 14, 2007
On February 13, 2007, the European Commission (the “Commission”) published its long-awaited draft guidelines outlining the analytical framework that it intends to apply to non-horizontal mergers (the “Draft Guidelines”). The Draft Guidelines complete a series of important recent developments in European Union merger control practice, including most notably the amendment of the substantive test for merger review and publication of the Horizontal Merger Guidelines in 2004. This article examines in detail the extent to which the Draft Guidelines set out a coherent and economically sound approach to non-horizontal mergers. In particular, this article examines how the Commission has distilled the key principles from recent Community Court judgments and responded to the various criticisms made of past Commission practice in this area.
