Antitrust In Life Sciences—key European Developments For Pharma Companies

From shifts in merger review to significant abuse of dominance fines from the European Commission, we round up the most important recent events in the antitrust space that life sciences companies should be aware of.

Mergers: EU call-in powers and FDI remain high on the agenda

For years, companies in innovative industries have paid close attention to the power of antitrust authorities to "call in" mergers that fall below mandatory filing thresholds, including to catch the acquisition of pre-revenue or low-revenue targets.

When the European Court of Justice (ECJ) confirmed in Illumina/GRAIL in September 2024 that the European Commission (EC) could only call in transactions that a member state (or states) had jurisdiction to review under its national merger control regime, it prompted cautious optimism that EU call-in risk would become a less pressing concern. However, at the time we noted that this should be tempered by (i) the increasing breadth of EU member