In August 2015, the Competition Council (CC) of Latvia launched to the public consultation the draft version of the merger guidelines. Merger guidelines are to ease to merger participants fulfil all requirements for submitting a complete merger notification.
As the CC has concluded during its experience of merger review and multiple surveys carried out to identify the most common deficiencies of the competition law, for entrepreneurs it is rather difficult to prepare the complete and correct merger notification. Thus, in order to make the process of preparation of merger notice more clear and understandable to undertakings, as well as to reduce the amount of time the CC spends to review the merger, the CC developed draft version of the merger guidelines.
In the guidelines there are gathered recommendations for possible solutions on the most common uncertainties concerning preparation of the merger notification, e.g. how to calculate market shares of the undertaking, what is the difference between short-form and long-form merger notification etc.
Merger control is a significant part of the competition law and provides protection of public welfare from those mergers that may affect the competition by changing the market structure and limit consumers’ possibilities to choose the best offers in price and quality.
A permission from the Competition Council is required for mergers where the combined turnover of the participants in the merger for the previous financial year has exceeded EUR 35 572 000 or the total market share of the participants in the merger in the particular market exceeds 40 per cent. If a notification report of a merger has not been submitted, the CC is entitled to take a decision regarding the imposition of a fine of up to EUR 1400 for each day, counting from the day when the notification should have been submitted.