Jurisdictional thresholds: The European Commission publishes a Staff Working Document on evaluation of procedural and jurisdictional aspects of EU merger control and launches an initial impact assessment

In March 2021, announcement that the European Commission [the “Commission”] would review its assessment of referrals under Article 22 of Regulation n° 139/2004 [the “Merger Regulation”] has attracted much attention from practitioners and academics. Under this new approach, the Commission will accept, under specific circumstances, referrals from National Competition Authorities [“NCAs”] for transactions not meeting jurisdictional thresholds under national and EU law. Ongoing debates require prior evaluation of merger control enforcement in the EU As this new development in merger control opens the door to many questions and debates, it makes sense to take a step back to have a broader perspective on the Commission’s policy initiative in relation to its enforcement practice toward mergers. In