Brussels, 11/12/2001 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday, in Strasbourg, Mario Monti, Competition Commissioner, presented the content of a Green Paper which describes the improvements that should be made to the regulation on mergers, now 11 years old, in order to make it more conform to economic reality. Proposals are essentially to: a) extend Community competence to the merger operations notified in at least three Member States. The Commission suggests submitting more mergers to the one-stop-shop review rather than being filed with several national competition authorities; b) simplify mechanisms for referring merger cases to national jurisdictions; c) and make a more flexible deadline for notifiers that are compelled to submit "remedies" for their merger. This "Stop the Clock" measure would make it possible to suspend the procedure during 20 to 30 days in order to give the parties the time needed to make coherent proposals; d) launch a debate on the notion of market domination in order to devaluate the respective merits of criteria retained by European and US authorities that have a very different approach. While there is some polemic about the way in which the Commission deals with the operations notified, following several consecutive bans, Commissioner Monti repeated that merger activity is on the increase and that it is therefore normal for there to be more blocking on the part of his services. The Commissioner defended himself by saying that, proportionally speaking, bans are no more numerous now than before, but that there is simply a maximum concentration of operations. He said this trend is directly linked to greater globalisation of activities. The Member States and the professional circles are invited to take a stance on the founding of these proposals before 31 March 2002. The Commission will then draw the consequences of this consultation and will contemplate whether it is appropriate to present a proposal of amendment to the regulation.