Overview
The Commission has undertaken the broadest review in the field of mergers of the past two decades. New Draft Merger Guidelines were published on 30 April 2026, and a public consultation is ongoing.
The existing Horizontal Merger Guidelines and the Non-Horizontal Merger Guidelines, together the ‘Merger Guidelines’, respectively published in 2004 and 2008, provide guidance on the Commission’s practice when assessing the impact of mergers on competition, within the legal framework of the EU Merger Regulation.
Since the introduction of both sets of guidelines, there have been transformational changes in the economy, ranging from digitalisation and globalisation to decarbonisation, which can impact competitive dynamics in many markets. Many of those changes have already surfaced in the enforcement practice of the Commission. After about 20 years, the current review of these guidelines will serve to update the assessment framework for mergers in light of these changes and new market realities, and also enable us to reflect the Commission’s case practice and the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union.
In this context, the draft Merger Guidelines aim to modernise the way the Commission assesses mergers to reflect today’s changed geo-political and trade context, where industrial scale and global competitiveness, as well as innovation, investment have become increasingly important, and sustainability and resilience have become relevant parameters for competition. The objective is to provide a comprehensive, predictable, and lasting framework. The revised Merger Guidelines should offer a new approach based on a legally and economically sound and evidence-based analytical framework for all types of mergers and all economic sectors. The primary mission of EU merger control will remain the same: preserving vibrant and competitive markets which drive companies to offer to their customers and consumers innovative, affordable, and high-quality products.
The draft text of the new Merger Guidelines is now published for consultation.
This will be accompanied by a stakeholder workshop that will take place on 10 June 2026 and the presentation of the Economic study on the dynamic effects of mergers undertaken for the Commission.
The Commission will continue engaging with all stakeholders before finalising its review process in Q4 2026.
More information on each of these aspects of the process can be found below.
1. Consultation on the draft text of the new Merger Guidelines
On 30 April 2026, DG COMP published the draft text of the new Merger Guidelines for consultation.
Feedback is welcome until 26 June 2026, via EU Survey.
The purpose of this consultation is to gather stakeholders' and citizens' views on the draft Merger Guidelines, which will inform the final text of the Merger Guidelines.
Responses must be submitted exclusively via the EU Survey link provided above. (Please note that spontaneous submissions outside this link will not be considered).
For the consultation, the text has been divided in various sections, with feedback appreciated on each of these. At the end, there is a possibility to make overarching comments, and include attachments to your contribution. When providing feedback, please ensure that comments on each specific section are included directly under that section, rather than in an attachment. Instead, attachments should be used to provide supplementary information, relevant documents, or supporting reports that add value to the feedback. Instructions on how to submit your contribution, as well as additional information, can be found on the EU Survey website.
A reference copy of the draft text of the new Merger Guidelines can be accessed here: Draft Communication from the Commission
Responses will be published on the DG Comp website, in accordance with the instructions provided on the EU Survey website.
Summary of main technical novelties
To provide further context on its initiative, DG COMP has published a summary of the main technical novelties in the text.
2. 3rd Stakeholder Workshop (10 June 2026)
In the context of the second public consultation, DG Competition is organising a third interactive technical stakeholder workshop on aspects of the draft text of the Merger Guidelines, to gather views on these.
The workshop will take place on 10 June 2026.
More information about the workshop, including registration details for interested participants, will be shared in due course. More information about the previous two stakeholder workshops is provided below.
3. Economic study on the dynamic effects of mergers
The Commission has commissioned an economic study on the dynamic effects of mergers, which will inform the review of the Merger Guidelines.
Dynamic merger effects are linked to the forward-looking assessment of firms’ future behaviour, particularly their ability and incentive to invest and innovate, as well as to enter or exit a market in the mid-to-long term.
The study aims to provide analytical foundations to assess whether a merger has a positive or negative impact on these dynamic factors, and how they trade off against static factors—such as changes in prices or output.
The study will consist of a comprehensive assessment of dynamic merger effects in four parts:
- Part 1: An interdisciplinary synopsis assessing relevant facts, figures, and economic theories related to innovation and investment competition, integrating insights from industrial economics, financial economics, macroeconomics, and business literature. It should link together results from different disciplines and distil implications for the specific context of merger control.
- Part 2: A conceptual analysis identifying the conditions under which mergers may yield dynamic benefits or harms, detailing the economic mechanisms, criteria for measurement, and offering insights into how to balance opposing effects.
- Part 3: An applied examination using case examples to demonstrate the practical relevance of these dynamic factors.
- Part 4: An evaluation of the likelihood of the relevant mechanisms in practice, identifying bottlenecks to investment and innovation, and suggesting how EU merger control could help to address these challenges.
For more information, check DG Competition’s dedicated subpage for tenders.
The study will be published by September, and presented at an event to be held in September. Further information on that event will be provided soon.
4. Past Activities
The General Consultation
Between 8 May 2025 and 3 September 2025, the Commission carried out a General Consultation. For more information, please refer to the Have Your Say page.
Download the contributions to this consultation and a high-level summary.
The In-Depth Consultation
In parallel, the Commission also carried out an In-depth Consultation with technical questions on seven key topics of the review.
For each topic, the Commission published seven focused papers, elaborating on a wide range of current challenges and on the legal and economic parameters used in its merger control assessment. The papers provide (i) technical background to help understand the context in which the Commission is seeking feedback, and (ii) a number of topic-related technical questions. The seven papers can be found here:
- Topic A: Competitiveness and resilience
- Topic B: Assessing market power using structural features and other market indicators
- Topic C: Innovation and other dynamic elements in merger control
- Topic D: Sustainability and clean technologies
- Topic E: Digitalisation
- Topic F: Efficiencies
- Topic G: Public policy, security and labour market considerations
The contributions to this consultation may be found below:
The main opinion trends will be debated during the interactive technical stakeholder workshops (see below for more information). In preparation of these workshops, DG Competition published a written overview of the main trends emerging from the public consultations in the Stakeholder Workshops webpage.
1st and 2nd Stakeholder Workshops
In the context of the review of the Merger Guidelines, as a follow-up to the public consultations, DG Competition is organizing two interactive technical stakeholder workshops on key aspects of the review of the Merger Guidelines. The aim of the workshops is to gather views on these important topics and discuss how they could be incorporated in the Merger Guidelines.
The workshops will take place on 4 December 2025 and 20 January 2026, respectively. During the workshops, the key opinion trends emerging from the public consultations will be debated.
More information about the workshops, including a written overview of the key opinion trends and main takeaways, are available on the Stakeholder Workshops webpage.
Conference: Shaping the Future of EU Merger Control
DG Competition hosted on 5 March 2026 a conference to discuss key aspects of the ongoing review of the Merger Guidelines. This event brought together leading experts and stakeholders to explore the latest developments and challenges in EU merger control.
The conference informed the Draft Merger Guidelines, ensuring that the EU’s merger control framework remains effective and fit for purpose in the context of evolving market realities. The event featured a distinguished lineup of speakers, including prominent competition law and policy experts.
The conference was closed by Executive Vice-President Teresa Ribera.
You can watch a video of the highlights of the Conference here.
5. Background to this initiative
The main objective of the merger control system is to preserve a vibrant and competitive internal market, with dynamic competition. It allows companies to gain scale, to innovate, to invest, and to offer better products. At the same time, merger control prevents the accumulation of market power in the hands of one or a small number of companies, which can harm consumers and businesses, and damage the EU’s productivity and economic growth.
The legal basis for EU merger control is the EU Merger Regulation. In assessing proposed mergers, the Commission considers whether they can be expected to significantly impede effective competition in the EU. If they do not, they are approved unconditionally. If they do, the merging companies may offer remedies, i.e., propose certain modifications to the deal that would guarantee continued competition on the market. If no adequate remedies to the competition concerns have been proposed by the merging parties, the Commission may prohibit the transaction to prevent harmful effects on businesses and consumers in terms of higher prices, lower quality or a more limited choice of goods or services.
Mergers that may impact competition can involve companies that are actual or potential competitors on the same market (horizontal mergers) or firms that are active on different levels of the supply chain or in neighbouring markets (non-horizontal mergers). To provide guidance on how it assesses these different types of mergers under the EU Merger Regulation and their compatibility with the internal market, the Commission issued guidelines: the Horizontal Merger Guidelines (published in 2004) and the Non-Horizontal Merger Guidelines (published in 2008). The Merger Guidelines reflected, at the time of publication, the principles underpinning the Commission’s evolving experience appraising horizontal and non-horizontal mergers under the EU Merger Regulation (that of 1989 as well as 2004) as well as the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union.
Over the more than 20 years since the 2004 EU Merger Regulation and its accompanying guidelines, there have been significant market trends and geopolitical developments that have led to transformational shifts in many markets, putting the existing merger control framework to the test. Like all competition tools, EU merger control needs to remain sharp and up to date.
While the objective of merger control, in accordance with the EU Merger Regulation, remains valid and unchanged—ensuring mergers do not distort competition in the internal market—the Commission’s assessment of mergers under the EU Merger Regulation has evolved to capture those new realities. There has also been case law of the Court of Justice which has informed the Commission’s interpretation of the EU Merger Regulation and the current Merger Guidelines.
In light of this, the Commission is proposing to adapt both the Horizontal and Non-Horizontal Merger Guidelines in a holistic exercise.
Contact
If you have any general questions on the review process, please contact comp-mg-review
ec [dot] europa [dot] eu (COMP-MG-REVIEW[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu)
If you have any questions related to the Economic Study, please contact COMP-MERGER-STUDYec [dot] europa [dot] eu (COMP-MERGER-STUDY[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu)