Control of concentrations
E.U. & Antitrust Newsletter Portugal
According to the instructions of the Competition Authority, any notifications relating to concentrations must be submitted online. This, incidentally, was already the case with most operations reported by lawyers working in this area.
The Directorate-General for Competition (European Commission’s body responsible for applying competition rules) asked companies to delay where possible any notifications falling within the scope of the EC Merger Regulation. This measure is due to the complexity of the situation imposed by COVID-19, and the inherent difficulty in gathering the information necessary, in particular on the part of third parties, with a view to analyzing the operations reported. Despite not being very clear, this measure seems to impose on those companies subject to the obligation to report concentration operations the burden of keeping these operations on standstill until informed otherwise. A great slowdown in the development of the markets in the coming months can therefore be expected.