Creative Commons

One of the cornerstones of competition law in EU is the merger control. Mergers can have a significant impact in the companies, the employees, the consumers and the economy of a Member State or the entire EU depending on its magnitude. Once they can promote the development and the economic growth of a society, they can also become a threat for the economy, harm the interests of the consumers and distort the competition. Since they are a substantial part of competition policy in Europe, the EU had to regulate the merger procedure and create a harmonised legislation in order to provide legal certainty and equal chances in the field of mergers and acquisitions on EU. In the first place I present the evolution of merger legislation from the application of Articles 101 and 102 TFEU, the necessity of the adoption of the first Merger Regulation 4064/89 and its replacement by the Regulation 139/2004, mainly, because of the “gap” which was created in the assessment of the mergers when the decisions were based on the “dominance test” of 4064/89. Furthermore, I try to analyse the main characteristics of the dominance test of 4064/89 and the SIEC test of 139/2004. It is true that the new substantive test provides a higher level of legal certainty and applies an effect‐base approach which gives the Commission the opportunity to examine the mergers with much more clarity and completeness. My thesis focuses on the analysis of the SIEC test and the important new criterion of the efficiencies in the assessment of the mergers and acquisition in EU. Moreover, the abovementioned topics are analysed from the view of the case law and I try to present the most characteristic cases which were related to the analysed issues for the best understanding of the merger control. In the final session, it is presented the proposition for the amendment of the Regulation 139/2004 under the Commission’s White Paper “Towards more effective merger control”. Finally, I close my dissertation with the conclusions inferred by the analysis.