Contribution de l’APDC à la consultation de la Commission sur la révision de la procédure simplifiée de contrôle des concentrations

1. The Association des Avocats Pratiquant le Droit de la Concurrence (the “APDC”) is a French association constituted by more than 130 lawyers, all of them being regular EC & Domestic Competition law practitioners.

2. The APDC is grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the debate on the reform of the simplified procedure, by commenting the different documents made available by the Commission on its Internet website on March 27, 2013. The APDC strongly supports the objective of the Commission to make administrative procedures less burdensome for Merger control, and especially the proposal to expand the scope of the simplified procedure.

3. Prior to commenting upon the proposed reform, the APDC would like to draw the Commission’s attention on a few preliminary remarks:
– From EU and non-EU companies’ perspective, EU Merger control is presently considered as a burdensome and lengthy procedure that can be detrimental to the development of their business. While the “slot” to obtain the financing of a transaction (from their credit institutions) has been substantially shortened over the past months due to the financial crisis, the length of the EU merger control process entails a significant risk that certain transactions simply cannot be implemented.
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