One year after the regulation combating unfair foreign subsidies (FSR) entered into force, it is already time to take stock. Deputy Director-General Karl Soukup of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition reported that the European Commission received 1,108 submissions of information for public procurement, for which it opened three in-depth investigations. As regards mergers and acquisitions, the European Commission received more than 120 pre-notifications, which led to two investigations and one decision (see EUROPE 13489/12).
For certain members of the European Parliament’s Committee on International Trade (INTA), the ratio between investigations being opened and the information received raises the question of the administrative burden that falls on the European Commission and, thus, the notification thresholds. “Can you fine-tune the system to reduce the regulatory burden [on the Commission]?” asked EPP coordinator Jörgen Warborn (Swedish) during the INTA meeting. Nevertheless, for other elected representatives such as Renew Europe coordinator Marie-Pierre Vedrenne (French), the thresholds—which had been revised upwards following negotiations among co-legislators—risk letting certain deals through.
As a reminder, the public procurement procedures that are subject to notifications are those for cases where the value of the public contract exceeds €250 million. Companies must notify the European Commission of mergers and acquisitions when their turnover is over €500 million and when they have received a financial contribution of more than €50 million from a third country (see EUROPE 12984/1).
According to Karl Soukup, the precision [of the thresholds] and the effectiveness of the regulation are still difficult to assess at this stage. He admits that the volume of submissions concerning public procurement had far exceeded initial expectations, but he believes that the regulation has proved effective in terms of deterrence.
The regulation and its thresholds must notably be revised by the European Commission by 13 July 2026. (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)