European Union: Published non-paper on Essential building blocks for a competition law and State aid framework enabling European competitiveness

The Austrian, Belgian and Czech delegations to the EU Council publish a non-paper on "Essential building blocks for a competition law and State aid framework enabling European competitiveness". It calls for better instruments in merger control concerning "Big Tech" such as an introduction of a European transaction value threshold to tackle "killer mergers", stating that the Article 22 referral is not an effective solution. Furthermore it proposes the revision of the Market Definition Notice and the consideration of recent developments in digitalisation. Lastly, it suggests not only focussing on consumer prices but rather complement this perspective by considering quality and innovation, taking this into account for a revision of the Block Exemption Regulation, and proposes several amendments to the State aid framework.