Merger Controls

On 29 April 2025, the Belgian Competition Authority announced its sectoral and strategic priorities. These priorities reflect a confident authority that seeks to strengthen its enforcement tools to meet new challenges in competition law.

A potential major overhaul of EU merger control review began on 8 May 2025. Time for stakeholders to speak up about whether and particularly how the European Commission should incorporate wider strategic or societal objectives into its merger assessments.

M&A transactions falling below the merger notification thresholds are not necessarily exempt from scrutiny. Companies should therefore carefully assess the potential competitive impact of their transactions, as the ACM has proven to be vigilant.

The ECJ wrote the epilogue to the Illumina/Grail saga, overturning the EC’s novel ‘Article 22’ approach. It is now clear that the EC cannot accept referral requests to review transactions that fall below the thresholds of national merger control regimes.

The Belgian Competition Authority has applied the Towercast case law in a first case in Belgium. It could possibly try do so again for certain hospital mergers that the legislator has recently exempted from merger filing in Belgium.

On the first of June, the Dutch national security investment screening regime (the Vifo Act) celebrated its first anniversary. Time to take stock of key findings and forthcoming developments.

The ink on the Digital Market Act has barely dried, but fast-evolving digital developments already have competition authorities calling for new tools. Is Big Tech not kept in check by the DMA, the antitrust rules and the EU Merger Regulation after all?

The European Commission is on the prowl in the pharma sector. Recent cases on alleged disparagement and pipeline drugs-killings show that it is not afraid to show its teeth and, ultimately, bite.

2023 marked the near finale of the European Commission’s overhaul of its competition policy, leaving only a few loose ends to tie up in 2024/2025. It is now time to watch theory be put into practice by the competition authorities and at the courts.