FCA Sanctions A Non-reportable Merger Under The Rules Applicable To Anticompetitive Agreements For The First Time

On 22 October 2026, the French Competition Authority (FCA) issued Decision No. 26-D-10 confirming that below-merger-control-threshold transactions may be reviewed through the lens of Article 101 TFEU prohibiting anticompetitive agreements and its national equivalents. Building on the 2023 ruling of the European Court of Justice in Towercast (case C-449/21), which affirmed that deals not reportable under merger control rules can, under certain circumstances, be analysed as abuses of dominance, the FCA has gone a step further in considering that such transactions may also fall foul of antitrust rules when implemented by non-dominant companies.

Background

It is the third time in three years that the FCA has relied on the Towercast doctrine to examine a transaction falling below the national merger control thresholds on the basis of traditional antitrust tools.