In a significant judgment rendered on July 13, 2022 (“Judgment”), the EU’s General Court validated the position taken by the European Commission (“EC”) in a March 2021 Guidance Paper encouraging national competition authorities (“NCAs”) to use Article 22 of the EU Merger Regulation (“EUMR”) to refer transactions to the EC that do not meet national merger control thresholds, but which they believe may threaten to significantly affect competition within the EU.

Cleary Gottlieb partner Nicholas Levy, senior attorney John Messent, and associates Edward Dean and Chloe Hassard co-authored the article, “The UK’s Proposed New National Security Regime: A Sledgehammer to Crack a Nut,” which was published in the Competition Law Journal by Edward Elgar Publishing.