Acquisitions of non-controlling minority shareholdings do currently not trigger the mandatory notification obligation of the EU Merger Regulation (EUMR) Although the Commission can partly apply Articles 101 and 102 TFEU to those acquisitions, it takes the view that the lack of a notification obligation constitutes an enforcement gap that it wants to close by expanding the jurisdictional scope of the EUMR The Commission’s main supporting argument is an economic one and based on various theories of harm. This article examines how strong, robust and convincing the economic case made by the Commission is and whether it justifies the additional regulatory and administrative burden that would be entailed by such expansion.
World Competition