Bridging the Divide? The European Court of First Instance Judgment in GE/Honeywell

Abstract

This short comment analyzes the history and outcome of the judicial review of the European Commission’s landmark decision blocking the 2001 GE/Honeywell merger, the first case where the European antitrust regulator enjoined an M&A transaction between two U.S.-incorporated companies that had already cleared the U.S. merger review process. The comment situates the GE/Honeywell case in the larger context of transatlantic economic governance and cooperation by using it to (1) illuminate some of the structural fault lines between the U.S. and EU approaches to antitrust law prior to the start of the EU’s antitrust modernization program, and (2) assess the extent to which these fault lines are being erased as a result of institutional and judicial developments relating to the implementation of the modernization program.

Keywords: comparative antitrust law, modernization of EU competition law, General Electric v. Commission (Case T-210/01)