Authorization: The European Commission publishes the non-confidential version of its 2018 decision authorizing a merger between the world’s largest suppliers of corrective lenses and branded eyewear (Essilor / Luxottica)

*This article is an automatic translation of the original article, provided here for your convenience. Read the original article. It took a year and a half to publish the European Commission's decision to authorize, after a phase 2 review and without conditions, the merger between two major players in the optical industry, Italy's Luxottica, a supplier of eyeglass frames and sunglasses, which owns the Ray-Ban, Oakley and Persol brands, and France's Essilor, a manufacturer of corrective lenses, which produced the first progressive lenses for presbyopia (under the Varilux brand). The vertical integration of the two world leaders in frames and lenses was likely to raise a number of competition concerns which, unsurprisingly, led the Commission to open an in-depth investigation, in