Bid to cut time wasted on merger probes

Date: 03/02/2000

By Peter Chapman

Competition Commissioner Mario Monti is set to unveil proposals designed to reduce the amount of time his officials waste investigating routine merger cases.

Details of the new measures have yet to be finalised, but officials say they could include abolishing the current requirement for the Commission to make a formal announcement every time it clears a merger after an initial one-month probe.

Such deals would instead be automatically deemed to be cleared after this deadline had elapsed, unless the Commission decided to launch a more in-depth investigation or called for concessions from firms in exchange for clearance.

Sources said the move could also be accompanied by a cut in the amount of paper work which firms have to provide for officials.

The new proposals, which are likely to be unveiled next month, are the latest in a string of reforms designed to save officials in the Commission's hard-pressed merger task force time and money, freeing up resources for detailed examinations of complex deals such as the recent wave of oil industry mergers.

The Commission's merger task force has seen its workload increase enormously over the past few years, with the number of mergers notified rising from just 58 in 1993 to 172 in 1997 and 235 in 1998, the last year for which complete figures are available.

As work on the proposals continues, Monti is working hard to win the support of member states and MEPs for a raft of other measures to reform the system for probing competition cases.

The linchpin of the Italian cartel-buster's plans is the White Paper on reforming the way the Commission probes potentially troublesome agreements between competing firms. These proposals, unveiled last year, would give member state regulators and courts more power to rule on routine cases.

Monti has also unveiled plans to clear agreements between manufacturers and distributors known as 'vertical restraints' automatically if the firms involved do not surpass a 30% market-share threshold, and wave through 'horizontal agreements' between competing firms which collude to share expenses such as sales, distribution, marketing and R&D costs. His officials are also reviewing the sales thresholds which trigger EU-level merger probes.