1. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

The title of this study puts the predictability of European Merger Policy at centre stage. This hapter serves to motivate and explain the outstanding importance attached to predictability. In the next section, the crucial importance of predictability for economic growth and development will be spelt out on an abstract and general level as well as with regard to competition policy and, more focused still, with regard to merger policy. Section three contains a brief summary of some of the empirical evidence dealing with the consequences of predictability – or its absence. In section four, the current degree of predictability in European Merger Policy is operationalised. Predictability in European Merger Policy was also the issue of a survey conducted among large European firms. Their perception of predictability is reported there as well. Section five contains a number of institutional proposals whose implementation could help increase the predictability of European Merger Policy – and hence its overall quality.