Coordinated Effects of Mergers: The EC Perspective

This article assesses the European Commission’s recent approach to coordinated effects in horizontal merger review. First, I provide an overview of the framework of assessment as described in the Horizontal Merger Guidelines, which consists in identifying characteristics of an industry that make it more or less susceptible to collusion following a merger. Second, I review the recent decisional practice of the European Commission towards coordinated effects in mergers by looking at how often co