Merit Olthoff is a Partner with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. She advises on all aspects related to competition law. Her focus is on EU and German merger control and antitrust investigations. She is also an expert in EU State aid law. Her recent experience includes EU and German merger control reviews in the oil and gas industry, banking and finance sector as well as private equity. On EU State aid law, she has worked with clients from a range of business sectors, including financial services, infrastructure, energy and consumer goods. She regularly advises financial industry clients and banks in European Commission State aid restructuring procedures. More recently, her focus is on State aid and tax. She is involved in a European Commission investigation in State aid through tax. Merit spent four years practicing in the Brussels office before transferring to Berlin in 2016. Merit speaks German, English and French.
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On 9 March, the European Commission ( Commission ) significantly amended its State aid framework to support the economy following Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. This revision of the existing Temporary Crisis Framework ( TCF ), which is now called Temporary Crisis and Transition Framework ( (...)
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Yesterday the European Commission put out for consultation a draft Implementing Regulation on proceedings pursuant to the Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR). Businesses and other interested parties have until 6 March 2023 to feed in their views. The FSR requires companies to notify the (...)
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On 30 June 2022, the three institutions of the European Union (the Commission, the Parliament and the Council) announced their political agreement on the text of the proposed regulation on foreign subsidies distorting the internal market (see their respective press releases here, here, and (...)
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The European Commission (’the Commission’) has published the results of the public consultation on its June White Paper on foreign subsidies. The policy document announces a legislative proposal for the control of companies in the EU market that benefit from foreign subsidies. In total, 150 (...)
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Tackling distortive effects caused by foreign subsidies in the EU single market is a top priority of the European Commission. In her first State of the Union address last week, EC President Ursula von der Leyen listed the legislative proposal on levelling the playing field as regards foreign (...)
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Since 1 February 2020, the UK is no longer part of the EU. Until the end of the transition period (31 December 2020), EU state aid rules remain fully applicable in the UK. Unless an extension of the transition period is agreed between the UK and the EU (the Parties), the future relationship (...)
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