Brasserie Nationale, Luxembourg’s largest brewery, has lost a legal battle to prevent the European Commission from reviewing its proposed acquisition of local wholesale beverage distributor Boissons Heintz, according to Reuters. The ruling, issued by the General Court of the European Union on Wednesday, confirms the Commission’s authority to examine mergers that fall below the usual revenue thresholds under certain conditions.

The decision reinforces the European Commission’s ability to step in on deals deemed significant to cross-border trade or local markets, even when such mergers do not meet standard financial criteria for automatic review. In this case, the Commission had intervened following a referral request from Luxembourg’s national competition authority, which lacks its own merger control rules.

Per Reuters, Brasserie Nationale challenged the Commission’s review on the grounds that the referral request came too late, arguing that the timing violated procedural rules. However, the General Court rejected that claim, finding that the brewery had not demonstrated that the EU enforcer acted outside the legal time frame.

“Since information limited to the mere existence of a concentration does not constitute ‘making known’ within the meaning of EU law, Brasserie Nationale and Munhowen have not shown that the request for referral had been submitted out of time,” the judges stated in their ruling. Munhowen is Brasserie’s distribution subsidiary.

The ruling comes as part of a broader trend in which companies are increasingly pushing back against EU oversight of deals that, while not triggering revenue-based thresholds, are flagged as potentially harmful to competition. The General Court’s stance echoes its approach in last year’s high-profile case involving U.S. gene sequencing company Illumina, which successfully challenged a similar Commission intervention over its acquisition of Grail, a cancer diagnostics firm, according to Reuters.

Despite its ongoing legal fight, Brasserie has moved ahead with seeking formal EU approval for the acquisition and has submitted proposals to mitigate any anticompetitive effects identified by regulators. The Commission is expected to issue a final decision on the deal by July 17.

The case, officially registered as T-289/24 Brasserie Nationale and Munhowen v Commission, may still be appealed to the Court of Justice of the European Union, the EU’s highest judicial authority.

Source: Reuters