51At the same time, the Merger Regulation contains provisions which, for reasons of legal certainty and in the interests of the undertakings concerned, are designed to limit the duration of the controls which the Commission must carry out. Thus, under Article 4 of that regulation, notification to the Commission of a concentration operation with a Community dimension must take place within a week. Articles 6 and 10(1) of the Regulation provide that the Commission must begin its examination immediately and that it has a period of, normally, one month within which to decide whether or not to initiate the formal procedure for examining the compatibility of the operation with the common market. Under Article 10(3) of the regulation, the Commission must in principle rule on the matter within a period of four months, which runs from the decision to initiate the proceeding. Article 10(6) provides that ‘[w]here the Commission has not taken a decision ... within the deadlines ..., the concentration shall be deemed declared compatible with the common market’ (Schlüsselverlag J.S. Moser, paragraph 33).
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