The Commission has today decided to give conditional approval to Bayer's plans to buy Monsanto under EU merger rules...

Some investigations, including by the US Department of Justice, are still ongoing. The Brazilian, Chinese and South African competition authorities have cleared the transaction with conditions that addressed their competition concerns...

[M]any citizens have reached out to express concerns that go beyond competition policy. For example, concerns on the risks that GMOs and glyphosate may pose for the human health and the environment. These are concerns that go to the question of what kind of society we want to live in and what kind of regulation should apply to our agriculture...

We have strict regulatory standards in the EU that protect human health and the environment...

And we will of course remain just as strict to protect these standards...

As with any part of the economy, digital technology is also changing the face of conventional agriculture. As digital agriculture and the use of big data become increasingly important, the question of who controls access to the data matters here, too. The agricultural sector is currently working on an industry Code of Conduct on data ownership and access. Last September, the Commission proposed a framework on the free flow of non-personal data in the EU, which encourages the development of such rules across sectors to facilitate data access and portability.