Brussels, 20/07/2001 (Agence Europe) - As briefly announced yesterday, the European Commission opened a second phase in the review procedure on the merger between the steel companies Usinor (France), Aceralia Corporaciùon Siderúrgica (Spain) and Arbed (Luxembourg). The operation was notified with a view to being authorised not only under the ECSC Treaty but also the EC Regulation on mergers since the partners manufacture products covered by the ECSC Treaty (mainly hot rolled flat steel products, cold rolled flat steel products, quarto plate, tinplate and coated sheet) and products not covered by this Treaty. After a preliminary inquiry, the Commission was able to determine that there was no danger of abuse of dominant position for all "non-ECSC" aspects of the dossier, which only make up a small share of the activities of the new company provisionally called Newco Steel. It therefore authorised the operation concerning this chapter. The Commission on the other hand showed it was concerned about the strong position of the three partners on a certain number of steel markets. The new company would in fact be twice as large as its closest rivals namely Corus (20 million tonnes of steel) and Thyssen Krupp (18 million tonnes), leading to a particularly high market share (practically 70%) for hot-rolled coils, cold rolled flat carbon steel products, hot dip galvanised sheets, electro-galvanised sheets, organic coated sheets, steel for packaging, in Europe, construction sheets in France and the Benelux and certain distribution markets in France and Spain/Portugal.