Several opinions from the FCA are also expected. One should cover the competitive transformation of the financial sector and provide guidance regarding anticompetitive behaviours in the FinTech and payment services sectors. Another one should focus on the recent changes and concentration in the contemporary music sector.

Lastly, the FCA should remain a key source of proposals in the debate about the future regulation of digital platforms led by the European Commission (i.e. the Digital Market Act and the Digital Services Act) and the revision of the European Commission’s communication on the relevant markets. Surely, the impact of the digital economy on market definitions will be part of the debate.

In December 2020 a new law (the DDADUE law) strengthened the effectiveness of the FCA’s action by allowing, inter alia, a modernisation of its investigation procedures (e.g. simplification of the regime applicable to dawn raids, extension of the scope of the simplified procedure, simplification of the leniency regime).

The DDADUE law also empowered the French Government to transpose into French law the 2018 European directive ECN+ which confers extended powers to national competition authorities, allowing them to intervene more quickly, such as the right to:

• Have a discretionary prosecution system (i.e. the possibility to reject complaints for lack of priority to focus its resources on key anticompetitive practices).
• Impose more deterrent fines against professional organisations.
• Open ex-officio interim measure cases.
• Impose structural injunctions in litigation proceedings to ensure anticompetitive practices actually cease.

The FCA announced it will pay attention to transactions where the Covid-19 pandemic may have altered the economic context (such as in the retail sector). In particular, the FCA will ensure that no transactions artificially escape its review due to low turnover achieved in 2020.

More generally, to address what some call a loophole in merger control, the FCA announced it will fully grasp the possibility granted to national competition authorities by the European Commission to refer to the latter sensitive transactions (for example, killer acquisitions in various sectors such as the digital economy and pharma), even when these transactions are not subject to national merger control (e.g. because the turnover thresholds are not met). The FCA announced the creation of a monitoring taskforce to detect such acquisitions.

This referral mechanism does not completely close the debate about the relevance of the implementation of either an ex post merger control regime or a regime in which it could impose disclosure requirements on some market players in key markets even where the current turnover thresholds are not met (e.g. killer acquisitions in the tech, health and media - see the FCA’s opinion on the competitive situation in Corsica).

The FCA should present the conclusions and recommendations of a working group on compliance principles, tools and actions to be implemented by companies. It is also expected to publish a much-debated study dedicated to professional associations.

Following the publication by eight French regulators (including the FCA) of a working paper on their role and tools in the battle against climate change, sustainable development will continue to feature high on the FCA’s agenda who announced it will support companies with guidance when they plan to carry out concerted actions with environmental objectives.