GERMANY Trends and Developments Contributed by: Andreas Rosenfeld and Sebastian Steinbarth, Redeker Sellner Dahs
New Federal Government Since 6 May 2025, Germany has a new federal government of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany and the Social Democratic Party of Germany. The coalition agreement is generally light on competition policy. While the two par - ties agree to ensure the effective application of competition law in Germany and endeavour to increase both efficiency and speed in the pro - ceedings, it remains to be seen how this is to be achieved. International competitiveness, Euro - pean sovereignty and security are to be given greater consideration in merger control. At the same time, it is to be expected that sustainability and climate protection aspects will play a less important role in competition policy than under the former Green Party’s Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection Robert Habeck. Instead, AI is supposed to become a new focus for the new federal government. An expert com - mission on the topic of “Competition and AI” is to be set up in the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. The new Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy is Katherina Reiche, previously CEO of E.ON subsidiary Wes - tenergy. Conclusion Compared to 2023, both the number of merger notifications as well as the number of Phase II investigations increased noticeably in 2024, while the average duration of Phase II investi - gations only increased slightly from 5.3 to 5.6 months. However, the share of Phase II inves - tigations ending with either a withdrawal of the notification or the prohibition of the transaction by the FCO increased substantially to half of the total. Parties involved in Phase II investigations should therefore be prepared for an in-depth scrutiny of their transactions which can last sig -
The sector inquiry into publicly available charg - ing stations for electric vehicles came to the con - clusion that there is no need for the application of Section 32f(2) GCA as there are no objectively plausible indications that future mergers would significantly impede competition. In particular, it found that the continued dynamic develop - ment of market shares in the operation of pub - licly accessible charging infrastructure has so far been largely due to organic growth by market participants. The sector inquiry into refineries and fuel whole - sale on the other hand came to the conclusion that there are significant competitive risks of both collusion and price manipulation in the relevant markets. Consequently, in March 2025, the FCO initiated a proceeding pursuant to Section 32f(3) GCA to examine whether there is a significant and continuing malfunctioning of competition in the wholesale of fuels. Should the FCO establish such a malfunctioning, further targeted meas - ures against market participants would become available. However, the FCO has not given any indication so far that it considers application of Section 32f(2) GCA. This is most likely due to the fact that most relevant market participants exceed the relevant revenue thresholds and would therefore already fall under the German or European merger control regime. The FCO had already once previously announced an assessment of the application of Section 32f(2) GCA following its sector inquiry into domestic waste collection and hollow glass pro - cessing in December 2023. However, no result of this assessment has been published to date. It therefore remains to be seen how the instrument will prove itself in practice.
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