The Reshaping Of Competition Rules And Procedures In Italy

In Short

The Situation: Over the last year, the Italian Competition Bill (Law 287/1990) has undergone a significant number of amendments aimed at strengthening the enforcement powers of the Italian Competition Authority ("ICA"). At the time of writing, the Italian Parliament has approved changes to the law that are meant to align the Italian merger control timeline with the procedure before the European Commission under the European Union ("EU") Merger Regulation.

The Result: The reform goes above and beyond the long-awaited alignment of the domestic legislation with the EU rules. It sets the stage for more aggressive enforcement of merger control rules and broadens the ICA's investigative powers. As a result of the reform, the ICA can now count on: (i) the power to review competitively sensitive, below-threshold mergers; (ii) a wider substantive test to block anticompetitive transactions; (iii) a new settlement procedure for cartels and unilateral