Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- I MARKET STRUCTURE
- II INDUSTRIAL PRICING AND PRICING SCHEMES
- III COMPETITION POLICY
- IV MERGERS AND MERGER CONTROL
- 17 Unprofitable exogenous mergers
- 18 Profitable horizontal mergers and welfare
- 19 Using the Herfindahl–Hirschman index
- 20 Cournot and merger control
- 21 Vertical mergers
- 22 Enforcement of the US merger guidelines
- 23 Enforcement of the European merger regulation
- Index
23 - Enforcement of the European merger regulation
The merger decisions of the European Commission
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- I MARKET STRUCTURE
- II INDUSTRIAL PRICING AND PRICING SCHEMES
- III COMPETITION POLICY
- IV MERGERS AND MERGER CONTROL
- 17 Unprofitable exogenous mergers
- 18 Profitable horizontal mergers and welfare
- 19 Using the Herfindahl–Hirschman index
- 20 Cournot and merger control
- 21 Vertical mergers
- 22 Enforcement of the US merger guidelines
- 23 Enforcement of the European merger regulation
- Index
Summary
Introduction
In this chapter we present an analysis and assessment of the reasoning presented by the European Commission in justification of its decisions under the Merger Regulation since September 1990. The purpose of doing so is not primarily to see whether the Commission's decisions were in fact the right ones to make in the circumstances. Too much of the information that would be needed to make that assessment reliably is not available to us, for unavoidable reasons (such as business confidentiality) as well as some avoidable ones. Instead, the purpose of this chapter is to infer from the Commission's published reasoning what in fact have been the procedures and criteria it has used in the assessment of merger proposals, and to evaluate these. To make this inference will require substantial examination of the detailed reasoning in a large number of cases, partly because a general tendency in the Commission's procedures cannot be revealed in single cases, and partly because (as will be seen) there has not always been consistency between the reasoning deployed in different cases. Nonetheless, even bearing in mind the limitations of this kind of inference, we conclude that the Commission's procedures are open to a number of criticisms:
The definition of concentrative joint ventures is open to considerable manipulation, in that changes in the form of transactions may be encouraged by the desire of firms to have their proposals reviewed under the Regulation instead of under procedures elsewhere.
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- Applied Industrial Economics , pp. 413 - 435Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998
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