Financial markets - Merger: The Council of State rules against contradictory procedure when regulatory body acts as expert by the Court (CEGID/CCMX)

– CE, 13 February 2006, Société Fiducial informatique and Société Fiducial expertise, n° 279180 The above-mentioned judgment of the Conseil d'État will no doubt give rise to comments on its content, as it had already provoked by the judgment before it, which had shown the value attributed by the administrative court to independent merger control, rather than to its still suspected exercise of complacency by the Minister of the Economy. When the proposed takeover in the computer accounting sector was referred to the Minister, he ruled on the project without the opinion of the Competition Council, and at the request of competitors who considered themselves threatened by this concentration, the Conseil d'État, by a decision of 20 July 2005, made it clear to the Minister that the Competition