Illumina/Grail in light of the Draghi Report: Decoding a paradigm to catch killer acquisitions

The Court of Justice of the European Union's decision in Illumina/Grail limits the European Commission's power to accept non-notifiable transactions from the EU Member States. The decision also offers an insightful multi-pronged literal, historical, contextual and teleological interpretation of Article 22 of the EU Merger Control Regulation 139/2004. This article maps the Court’s decision in light of the Draghi recommendation to ‘revamping’ competition for more streamlined and effective enforcement. Following a thorough analysis of the decision, it decodes the dispersed legislative instruments, which can potentially capture innovation-driven acquisitions, that may otherwise escape scrutiny under the traditional turnover-based merger control framework. To offer a complete view, the discussion also refers to ex-post developments, including but not limited to the Illumina/Grail-related developments as well as the Commission's unconditional clearance of Nvidia/Run:ai, a prominent innovation-driven merger in the generative AI-sector.