Merger remedies in the European Union: An overview

In this article, we briefly review the EC policy on merger remedies. In doing so, we stress the possible problems and risks associated with the different types of remedies. Although overall we believe the EC has taken a very sensible approach (its recent policy on merger remedies clearly makes treasure of the FTC experience), we are still not too optimistic that remedies will be able to restore competition in the majority of the cases. Although we acknowledge that the EC has taken a number of steps to guarantee that remedies will be successful in restoring competition, we argue that the EC should make even more attention to the possibility that the divestiture favours collusion, and we suggest that a more widespread use of the practice of finding an ‘upfront buyer’ might also help in this respect.