Merger Control in the European Union and the United States: Just the Facts

"This paper compares merger enforcement policies in the EU and the US, with respect to both procedural structures and standards of review. Regarding procedures, firms in both jurisdictions must file notification for transactions exceeding certain thresholds. Mergers that might raise competitive concerns receive in-depth reviews, after which deals found to be anticompetitive may be blocked (EU) or challenged in court (US). Alternatively, parties may merge after committing to divestitures of overlapping activities or otherwise remedying the main concerns. The US has lower notification thresholds and thus generates more filings—in recent years about five times as many—but the EU regime generates more in-depth investigations per filing. According to most of our measures, a larger fraction of the investigated EU mergers will be fully or partially inhibited."