A set of draft best practices aimed at fostering and facilitating information sharing between national competition authorities ("NCAs") within the European Union, has been made public by the European Commission. For drawing them up, the Commission is seeking the opinion of interested parties throughout the recently set up Merger Working Group.

The best practices are intended to foster and facilitate information sharing between national competition authorities in the EU when they are engaged in the review of the same merger or acquisition that does not qualify for the one-stop shop review by the Commission at EU level, but needs approval in several national jurisdictions. The best practices do not envisage cooperation in all multijurisdictional cases, just with mergers where cooperation is likely to be beneficial include those which have the potential to affect competition in more than one Member State, or where remedies need to be designed in more than one Member State.

The success of cooperation will depend to a great extent on the goodwill and cooperation of the merging parties. This cooperation is in the interest of merging parties and NCAs alike, as it can increase the overall efficiency, transparency and effectiveness of the merger review process. It will be particularly effective where the merging parties permit the NCAs to exchange confidential information, paying attention particularly to the timing of notifications.

The Merger Working Group, which was established in January 2010, consists of representatives of the European Commission and the NCAs of the European Union together with observers from the competition authorities of the European Economic Area. With regard to the  submissions, the Working Group will review the proposals with a view to publishing a final version in the autumn of 2011. The period of consultation will be opened until 27 of May 2011.