At the end of April 2026, the European Commission published its draft merger guidelines. The guidelines set forth how and according to what criteria business mergers are reviewed. We have submitted written comments on this matter and, in light of increasing market concentration in Europe, are calling for stricter guidelines.
You can find our submission here.
Corporate criticism of the guidelines
Since the draft guidelines were published, the draft has been met with a barrage of criticism. Large corporations and their lobbyists are calling for even more lenient rules in merger control. That is the exact opposite of what we need to curb market concentration in Europe.
Civil Society’s important voice
We are countering this with our submission:
- In some respects, the guidelines represent a step forward, as factors such as implications for sustainability, effects on employees, or reduced resilience can now be used as grounds for blocking a merger. Merger control is also intended to safeguard the diversity of media and information sources.
- The European Commission has also broadened its definition of market power to encompass additional dimensions of market power—such as profit margins and the extent of barriers to market entry that a merger would create—in addition to market shares.
At the same time, we also have significant criticism of the guidelines and believe they need to be fundamentally revised. Here are a few examples:
- The draft guidelines create new options for approving mergers that harm competition and thus promote further market concentration (keywords: “scale” and “European champions”).
- The draft places too much emphasis on the supposed economies of scale of companies and global competitiveness, rather than highlighting the need for fair competition and limiting market power. When it comes to resilience, it focuses more on the size of companies than on diverse markets—this is the wrong priority.
- In its merger reviews, the Commission continues to rely too heavily on Industrial Organisation econometric models and fails to take alternative evidence into account, such as financial analyses based on company balance sheets.
- Overall, we are concerned about the limited resources available to the Commission for a thorough review of mergers.
You can find the details of our assessment here.
We remain committed to comprehensive and robust merger control in Europe and are actively involved in the process of the merger guidelines review.
Photo: Rebalance Now.
