The Hague, November 4, 2025 — Martijn Snoep, Chairman of the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM), has urged the EU to take a “step change” in its competition law framework by moving from coordination to genuine cooperation among national authorities and the European Commission through joint investigations and joint decisions.
In the latest blog post, Snoep said the upcoming revision of Regulation 1/2003 offers a “unique opportunity” to make EU competition enforcement “future-ready.” While the current system of case allocation and coordination between the Commission and national competition authorities (NCAs) has succeeded in decentralizing enforcement—accounting for about 85% of all EU competition cases—Snoep argued that parallel national investigations into cross-border infringements now create inefficiencies and risks of diverging outcomes and double jeopardy.
Snoep proposed formalizing Joint Investigative Teams (JITs) among NCAs and the Commission, modeled on mechanisms under the Digital Markets Act, Europol, and banking supervision. Such JITs, he said, would enable authorities to pool resources, share evidence, and coordinate procedures, particularly for “regional cases” that affect several but not all Member States.
Going further, Snoep outlined three potential routes for joint decision-making:
- Commission-only decisions following JIT probes;
- Parallel near-identical national decisions; and
- A single joint decision adopted collectively by participating authorities under an amended Regulation 1/2003 — the most ambitious but, he said, the “true step change” needed for coherent cross-border enforcement.
Conceding that such reforms would require “deep constitutional thinking,” Snoep argued that bold steps are both necessary and possible. “The EU’s founders were visionaries. Their perseverance in building an ever closer Union has brought us further than anyone imagined. It’s time for competition enforcement to take the next step,” he said.
