Non-Horizontal Merger Guidelines adopted

These 26-page Guidelines apply to mergers between companies either active each at a different level of the supply chain (vertical mergers) or in complementary or otherwise related markets (conglomerate mergers). As with vertical restraints and other business practices, the Commission is willing to recognize that such mergers could engender efficiency gains. Among the anticompetitive effects, the possibility that competing companies are denied access to an inportant supplier or face increased prices for this inputs and this results in higher prices for consumers (and less innovative products?).
As in other areas of EU competition law, the Guidelines foresee "save harbours", that is levels of market share and concentration below which anticompetive concern are unlikely.
Yet another example of the "more economic approach", it seems.