77Although the Commission has no discretion as regards the initiation of the Phase II procedure where it encounters serious doubts with respect to the compatibility of a concentration with the common market, Article 6(l)(c) of the Regulation providing that, in that case, the Commission ‘shall decide to initiate proceedings’, it nevertheless enjoys a certain margin of discretion in identifying and evaluating the circumstances of the case in order to determine whether or not they present serious doubts or, where commitments have been proposed, whether they continue to present them (see, by analogy, Case T-73/98 Prayon-Rupel v Commission [2001] ECR II-867, paragraphs 45 to 47). Even if the notion of ‘serious doubts’ is an objective one, the identification of such doubts necessarily requires the Commission to carry out complex economic assessments, in particular where it must assess whether the commitments proposed by the parties to the concentration are sufficient to dispel those serious doubts.
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