Germany: Adopted 11th Amendment to Act against Restraints on Competition including additional powers for the Federal Cartel Office

On 26 September 2023, the 11 Amendment to the Act against Restraints on Competition (the Competition Enforcement Act) was adopted by the upper house of the German Parliament, Bundesrat. The Act gives the Federal Cartel Office (Bundeskartellamt, FCO) additional powers to intervene after a sector inquiry. In particular, the Act enables the FCO to issue behavioural or structural measures requiring entities to address significant distortions of competition identified by the FCO during its inquiry. These measures may be issued to entities that contributed significantly to the distortion of competition, regardless of whether competition law was violated or not. Furthermore, the Act specifies that if distortions of competition were identified in a certain market, the FCO may order entities operating in this market to notify the FCO of future mergers if the buyer has domestic revenues of at least EUR 50 million and the target has revenues of at least EUR one million. Finally, the Act would create a legal basis for the FCO to cooperate with the European Commission in enforcing the Digital Markets Act. The Act enters into force the following day of its publication in the Federal Gazette.