According to the Commission, there are four main reasons behind the publication of the draft Notice, namely to:

1. Consolidate the current four jurisdictional Notices, all adopted by the Commission in 1998 under the previous Merger Regulation.
2. Take into account the changes introduced by the new Merger Regulation (139/2004) in relation to jurisdictional issues.
3. Incorporate recent case-law, in particular the position taken by the European Court of First Instance in several judgments on jurisdictional issues.
4. Clarify and update the Commission’s established practice in relation to a number of jurisdictional issues.  

The Working Group on the draft Commission Consolidated Jurisdictional Notice of the IBA Antitrust Committee submitted comments to the European Commission on the proposed consolidated jurisdictional notice.

The submission is divided into three main sections detailing preliminary observations, substantive issues and an annex comprised of a discussion of general points.

The Working Group believes that the publication of the consolidated jurisdictional notice is an extremely worthwhile project for the Commission to undertake.

However, the Working Group has identified a small number of areas where it believes that further reflection by the Commission on the draft Notice is required particularly with regard to practicality in application and consistency with certain well established definitions.

The Commission hopes to be able to adopt a new notice early in 2007. Prior to that the four remaining notices mentioned above remain in force.