Case law in European merger control

Abstract

This paper studies references to case law in merger control decisions by the EC Directorate General for Competition (DG COMP) in 1990–2022. I use the full set of references to Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) judgments in DG COMP decisions to examine implementation, industry dynamics and effects of the 2004 merger control reform. New case law is shown to be immediately incorporated into the merger control practice without a learning period, subsequent citations correlate with industry-specific merger activity and the 2004 ECMR reform changed which judgments are frequently cited. European merger control should thus be viewed as a dynamic framework rather than constant in time and across industries. When controlling for quantifiable determinants of case law citations, the ceteris paribus relevance of case law is constant for 20–25 years, implying that judgments do not intrinsically lose relevance over time.