BRUSSELS—The European Commission announced today that it has approved the proposed $58.5 billion (€48 billion) merger between Essilor (Euronext Paris: EI) and Luxottica (MTA: LUX). The Commission concluded that the merger would not adversely affect competition in the European Economic Area or any substantial part of it.

European competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, stated “Our job is to ensure that a merger won’t lead to higher prices or reduced choices, in this case for opticians and consumers in the EU. We’ve received feedback from nearly 4,000 opticians in a market test in Europe that Essilor and Luxottica would not gain market power to harm competition. As the result of the market test did not support our initial concerns we can let this merger go ahead unconditionally.”