Competition Law Market Trends in France

A key point raised by several firms was the arrival of Jérôme Vidal as head of the French Competition Authority’s mergers unit in June 2024.  Several interviewees mentioned that he was aiming to make ‘simple’ cases easier and allow firms to deal with transactions more quickly (particularly the pre-notification phase), while also allowing the authority to focus more of its resources on the more complex and sophisticated cases.  As part of this, many commentators were expecting the thresholds for merger clearances to be raised.

However, several commentators mentioned that, as a result of the economic situation in France currently, there had been fewer transactions in general and merger control was less of an area of activity for competition lawyers than the antitrust side.  A drop in the amount of private equity-generated filings was particularly noted.

It is interesting that this does not tally with the French Competition Authority’s own review of the year, which reports that this has been a record-breaking year for merger control filings.  According to the authority’s press release there were 295 transactions examined this year.  

How can this discrepancy be explained?  There’s no exact answer – unless the Authority had a particularly busy December after we had conducted our research, but this seems unlikely.  

Two other possible explanations would be that the merger control market was quieter in the second half of the year and so some of the lawyers were experiencing ‘recency bias’ when they highlighted that merger control had been less of a focus for them recently.  The Authority’s press release does not break down the activity by month, so this is a possible explanation.  

The press release also does not go into detail around the complexity of the mergers, so it may be that the record-breaking number was a result of a large number of less complex filings and that the lawyers did not see these as demanding enough to be worth mentioning.

It should be noted though that not all firms felt merger control work was becoming simpler, with some highlighting the complexity brought by foreign direct investment filings and the foreign subsidies regulation.  Particularly the FSR, given its comparatively recent introduction is seen by both lawyers and clients as being an area of growing work and, especially for clients, as making transactions more “cumbersome” and “bothersome”.

In light of the growth in foreign investment control, we will be encouraging firms to provide a separate submission for Foreign Investment when we begin our research for the France 2026 Guide.

Although the lawyers and the Authority seemed to disagree on the level of activity in the merger control area, there was more consensus on the activity on the behavioural side.  The Authority’s press release highlighted that fines of over one billion Euros had been imposed on companies for anti-competitive behaviour in 2024, while lawyers highlighted a rise in private enforcement litigation and damages actions concerning anti-competitive conduct.  Interviewees felt that it was becoming increasingly easy for claimants to seek damages, and this was an issue that companies were becoming ever more aware of.  This rise in damages and litigation is also leading to a rise in importance of third-party litigation funding.

In terms of the key sectors currently, interviewees particularly highlighted the technology and energy sectors.  Evidence of this can be seen in the large fine imposed on Google (250 million Euros) and in the Authority’s market inquiries into the electric vehicle charging sector and generative AI markets.  This is in line with the trend across Europe, and these two sectors will likely remain important in 2025. 

The Chambers France Guide, including a ranking of lawyers and law firms specialised in competition law issues, will be launched on February 6^th 2025.