At the EU level, merger, acquisition and creation of full-function joint ventures meeting certain revenue thresholds are subject to pre-merger control filing with the Directorate-General for Competition (DG COMP) of the European Commission under Regulation (EC) No. 139/2004 (EU Merger Regulation).
DG COMP announced that business continuity in the enforcement of the EU merger will be ensured. However, companies are encouraged to delay originally planned merger notification until further notice when possible.
Effective Monday, March 16, the DG COMP will temporarily accept electronic submissions by email on the functional mailbox of the merger registry (comp-merger-registry@ec.europa.eu) by putting the case team in copy if one has been assigned or through the Trusted Document Exchange platform (eTrustEx) for registered users. The delivery of the paper original will be arranged at a later time. Hand deliveries to DG COMP will remain possible. As before, the delivering party must call the Merger Registry prior to making a hand delivery.
There are no other changes in the EU Merger control procedure. The 25-working-day time period for the Phase I investigation and the 90-working-day time period for the Phase II investigation still are applicable. However, DG COMP announced that services are likely to face difficulties in collecting information from third parties, such as customers, competitors and suppliers, in the coming weeks and to face limitations in terms of access to information and databases and information exchanges following the remote working measures taken. This situation should be considered by notifying parties.
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