1. IntroductionIn 1999 the Swedish truck manufacturer Volvo announced its plan to acquire Scania, its main competitor in Northern Europe. This purchase would have made Volvo Europe's largest manufacturer of heavy trucks as well as the second largest bus manufacturer in Europe and should prepare Volvo for expansion into new markets in Eastern Europe. However, the European Economic Commission (hereinafter EEC) concluded that such a concentration would impose an unreasonable burden on consumers of heavy trucks and buses, especially in the Northern European countries of Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Ireland. Therefore he denied the merger. The aim of this article is therefore to follow the decision-making process and justification of the EEC. It does this by first describing the truck and bus industry separately within the relevant markets, then providing an overview of the competition policy and microeconomic context and finally concluding on the EEC decision.2. The truck market Within the truck market, it is an industry standard to distinguish between three market segments in relation to the weight of trucks: the light segment which includes trucks under five tons, the medium segment which includes trucks with a weight between 5 and 16 tons. and the heavy-duty segment which includes all trucks weighing more than 16 tonnes. This is due to the fact that the technical configurations, such as engine types, axles and payload of heavy trucks are very different from the medium and light duty segment. Therefore, customers do not consider trucks in the upper range to be interchangeable or substitutable with trucks in the medium or lower service segments of the market. This also results in a different...... mid-range of the Northern European paper and bus market. Since Volvo was found to already exploit its customers through price discrimination, the Commission's decision to deny the merger can be seen as an act of consumer protection, but also as a failure to create EEA-wide markets for trucks and buses. Works Cited European Commission (2012). Retrieved from: http://ec.europa.eu/competition/consumers/what_en.htmlEuropean Commission, MM (2000, March 14). Retrieved from http://ec.europa.eu/competition/mergers/cases/decisions/m1672_en.pdfPerloff, J.M. (2012). Microeconomics (6th ed., p. 467). Boston: Pearson.Perloff, J. M. (2012). Microeconomics (6th ed., p. 386). Boston: Pearson. European Commission, PL (2006). Preserving and promoting competition: a European response. Competition Policy Newsletter, 2006(2). Retrieved from http://ec.europa.eu/comm/competition/publications/cpn/