EU Merger Control and Non-Controlling Minority Shareholdings: The Case Against Change
After several years of debate fuelled by the General Court’s confi rmation in Aer Lingus1 that the EU Merger Regulation2 does not apply to the acquisition of non-controlling minority shareholdings,3 the European Commission (the Commission) has proposed expanding the EUMR to capture such transactions on the ground that the Commission “does not seem to have the tools to systematically prevent anticompetitive effects deriving from such structural links”.4 The Commission’s proposal raises two principal questions—is there a material gap in the EUMR’s scope of application and, if there is, is that gap large enough to justify subjecting a potentially signifi cant number of transactions to EU merger control? As with any expansion of regulatory oversight, the burden rests on the agency proposing such expansion, in this case the Commission, to demonstrate the need for change. The Staff Working Document acknowledges the existence of only “limited” empirical evidence of anticompetitive harm arising from
The revised system of case referral under the Merger Regulation: experiences to date
This article reviews the functioning of the system of case referral from the Commission to Member States and vice versa, now that the revised Merger Regulation (2) has been in place for over one year (3). The article attempts to summarise, in a largely factual manner, the experiences to date, and to highlight some of the substantive, procedural and practical issues which have arisen during this period.
Basic Legal Issues of the Management of Natural Resources of the Caspian Sea
Taking into account different interpretations of legal status of the Caspian Sea, the paper focuses on the current and future legal regime of its natural resources. The relevant international instruments are considered and in this context national approaches of the Caspian states to resource management are legally assessed. In conclusion, some basic prerequisites for the developing scope of the legal regime of the Caspian natural resources are suggested.