From its publication in 1989, the current merger regulation has become a cornerstone of the overall European Community competition regime. Regulation 4064/89 has been widely regarded as a great success, allowing the commission to handle over 2,400 notifications in the past 14 years. Of critical significance to practitioners, the commission has consistently succeeded in meeting the tight deadlines laid down by the existing framework, which provides precious commercial certainty for both merging parties and their advisers.
However, having launched a consultation process to review the merger system at the end of 2001, the European Commission’s (EC’s) reputation in this area was damaged by a series of defeats in 2002 before the Court of First Instance (CFI) in Luxembourg. During this annus horribilis for the EC, three successful appeals against merger prohibitions by Airtours, Schneider and Tetra Laval exposed genuine procedural weaknesses and substantive errors in its merger review process. This trio of defeats for the EC amplified the calls for major reform.
