The article analyzes the recent changes introduced by the European Commission to the Guidelines regarding the application of Article 82 of the EC Treaty (now article 102 TFEU) on abusive exclusionary practices by dominant companies. It emphasizes the essential role of competition rules in protecting the internal market, especially during periods of economic difficulty and market concentration.The author reviews specific changes, includi...

Starting from 2014, the European Commission initiated public consultations aimed at modernizing the rules concerning the control of economic concentration operations, with the objective of achieving efficiency and speed in evaluation. At the same time, efforts were made to strengthen the relationship between European and national regulations. The assessment of the application of the substantive test in the procedure for analyzing economic conc...

The European Commission has put forward in 2014 certain consultations dealing with companies, aiming to simplify and increase legislative consistency in that field. Legal effectiveness play the central role, but limits concerning the legal basis in the Treaty should always be checked out. By the most recent of these consultations, the Commission aimed at improving the legal framework of the Directive 2005/56/EC (Cross-Border Merger Directive),...

The paper presents the way in which the European Commission applied the transaction procedure in its second case ended by a transaction – case COMP/38866, Animal Feed Phosphates. This is the first case (and the only one so far) in which the Commission ended the investigation by a transaction even if only some of the parties under investigation transactioned (the so-called hybrid case).