Brussels, 14/11/2001 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has cleared the acquisition of joint control by French pay-television group Canal+ and Luxembourg-based RTL of the French sports rights agency Groupe Jean-Claude Darmon (GJCD) to create a new company that will sell TV rights to sporting events. As part of the deal, Canal+ and RTL will merge their own sports rights agencies, respectively Sport+ (France) and UEFA Sports GmbH (Germany) into the GJCD joint venture. The Commission's analysis showed that the venture will result in only insignificant and limited overlaps in the market for the acquisition and use of sports TV rights. In the market for the acquisition and re-sale of football broadcasting rights for events played annually, only the qualifying matches of the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA cup might cause competition problems, but even in France, where the merger's impact will be felt the most, the overlaps are small. It also established that the market for the acquisition and re-sale of football broadcasting rights to events played more intermittently was unaffected by the transaction. It also concluded that the merger would not strengthen Canal+'s position in the pay TV market or RTL's presence on the free TV market. KirchMedia and EBU (the European Broadcasting Union), a group of European free-to-aid TV channels, remain significant competitors.