Brussels, 18/09/2000 (Agence Europe) - The Conference that last week marked the tenth anniversary of the EU regulation on mergers, notably provided an opportunity to bring the former Commissioner for competition who prepared the regulation, Sir Leon Brittan the Commissioner had generally applied it, Karl van Miert, and the Commissioner who is presently applying it, Mario Monti. The works of the Conference then enabled the participants to review the various aspects of this regulation.
The works had been opened by the Commission President, Romano Prodi, who underlined that in ten years this regulation had become "the sharp stone of Community competition policy". Mr Prodi notably emphasised the needs to reinforce the competent service that must face a ever increasing work load given the particular expansion of merger operations in Europe and the world. "We must absolutely maintain the good relations and quality of service (…) and work towards the creation of an effective instance for the enterprises that address it and for their advisors". Furthermore, underlining the need for the national authorities to work in close cooperation with the Community instance, sine qua non condition for an effective control, Mr Prodi said he was convinced of the importance of increased cooperation with the competent American services. The Commissioner Mario Monti then said talked of the main challenges that present themselves on the eve of a new decades of Community competition policy. He recalled the major role of the regulation, explained the concept of "dominance" and "collective dominance", spoke of the tools available to the Commission to face them and emphasised the need for international cooperation of which he outlined the recent developments.