Tomorrow’s Market, Today’s Evidence: Counterfactuals in the EU Draft Merger Guidelines

This article explores one of the quieter, but potentially most consequential, innovations contained in the European Commission’s draft Merger Guidelines: the evolving treatment of the merger counterfactual. The authors argue that the revised framework reflects a more dynamic understanding of competition by allowing greater consideration of future market developments, while simultaneously placing greater emphasis on robust contemporary evidence to support those forward-looking assessments.