The EU Merger Working Group - which comprises national competition authorities with responsibility for merger review from the EU Member States and EFTA states as well as the European Commission - has published best practices which set out general principles for co-operation between national competition authorities when reviewing multi-jurisdictional mergers.
The best practices recognise that in some instances greater co-operation between national authorities would benefit the merging parties, third parties and the authorities themselves by increasing the efficiency, effectiveness and transparency of merger review processes involving more than one EU Member State. The best practices are intended to provide clarity on how this co-operation will operate and emphasise the importance of involvement by the merging parties.
The UK competition authorities, the Competition Commission (CC) and the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), have together been closely involved with drawing up the guidance and fully support this initiative. The CC and the OFT believe that these guidelines reflect their current practice in any event.
The best practices are available on the European Commission's website at:
