EU Competition Cases Scraper - DG COMP Decisions

Scrape European Commission competition cases directly from competition-cases.ec.europa.eu. Returns structured records for Mergers, Antitrust, Cartels, and State Aid — 65,000+ cases in total — with case number, parties, dates, decision type, sectors, countries, and more, in clean JSON.

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EU Competition Cases Scraper Features

• Extracts cases from all four DG COMP instruments: Mergers (M), Antitrust (AT), Cartels (CA), and State Aid (SA)
• Returns 14 fields per case: number, title, parties, notification date, decision date, decision types, simplified procedure flag, sectors, countries, related cases, press release references, regulation, and a direct link to the EC detail page
• Filters by instrument, member state, NACE sector, decision type code, decision date range, or a single case number lookup
• Supports full-text search across case titles and documents
• Pure API scraping — no browser, no proxy required
• Handles pagination automatically across 10,000+ merger cases and 65,000+ total records
• Politeness delay between pages; respectful of the EU public API

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Who Uses EU Competition Case Data?

• M&A counsel and deal teams — screen merger filings, track precedents, and check whether a deal in a given sector has been reviewed before
• Competition law firms — build case databases for client briefings and regulatory strategy
• In-house legal and compliance teams — monitor enforcement trends in their industry or geography
• Policy researchers and academics — analyze DG COMP decision patterns over time, cross-instrument or cross-sector
• Data vendors and legal tech companies — feed structured EC case records into search products or analytics pipelines

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How EU Competition Cases Scraper Works

1. You specify a case instrument (Merger, Antitrust, Cartels, or State Aid), optional filters, and a maximum number of cases to return.
2. The scraper queries the ODSE search API that powers the EC's own case search interface — it's the same data, pulled via the same endpoint the browser uses.
3. Results are returned as structured JSON, one record per case, with metadata normalized from the Elasticsearch index (dates parsed, HTML stripped, arrays flattened).
4. Pagination runs automatically until maxItems is reached or the result set is exhausted.

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Input

{
  "caseInstrument": "M",
  "maxItems": 100,
  "decisionDateFrom": "2020-01-01",
  "country": "DE",
  "sp_intended_usage": "Building a merger precedent database for a law firm"
}

Field	Type	Default	Description
caseInstrument	string	"M"	Instrument to query. Options: "" (all), "M" (Merger), "AT" (Antitrust), "CA" (Cartels), "SA" (State Aid)
decisionType	string	""	Filter by decision type code (e.g. DecisionType20240). Leave blank for all.
country	string	""	Filter by member state (two-letter ISO code or CountryDEU style).
policyArea	string	""	Filter by NACE sector substring (e.g. NaceV2Sector_K for Finance).
decisionDateFrom	string	""	Cases with last decision on or after this date (YYYY-MM-DD).
decisionDateTo	string	""	Cases with last decision on or before this date (YYYY-MM-DD).
caseNumber	string	""	Fetch a specific case by number (e.g. M.10646). Overrides all other filters.
searchText	string	""	Full-text search across case titles and documents.
maxItems	integer	15	Maximum cases to return. Set to 0 for unlimited.

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EU Competition Cases Scraper Output Fields

{
  "case_number": "M.10646",
  "case_title": "MICROSOFT / ACTIVISION BLIZZARD",
  "case_instrument": "M",
  "notification_date": "2022-11-09",
  "decision_date": "2023-05-15",
  "decision_types": ["DecisionType20100"],
  "simplified_procedure": false,
  "parties": ["Microsoft Corporation", "Activision Blizzard Inc."],
  "sectors": ["NaceV2Sector_J_62"],
  "countries": [],
  "related_cases": [],
  "press_release_refs": ["IP/23/2705"],
  "regulation": "MERegulation139_2004",
  "case_url": "https://competition-cases.ec.europa.eu/cases/M.10646"
}

Field	Type	Description
case_number	string	EC case number (e.g. M.10646)
case_title	string	Case title — typically COMPANY A / COMPANY B for mergers
case_instrument	string	Instrument code: M, AT, CA, or SA
notification_date	string	Case notification or initiation date (YYYY-MM-DD)
decision_date	string	Date of last decision (YYYY-MM-DD)
decision_types	array	Decision type codes
simplified_procedure	boolean	True if processed under simplified procedure
parties	array	Companies involved in the case
sectors	array	NACE sector codes
countries	array	Member state country codes involved
related_cases	array	Linked case numbers
press_release_refs	array	IP/press release reference codes
regulation	string	Applicable regulation code
case_url	string	Direct URL to the EC case detail page

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FAQ

How do I scrape EU competition cases from DG COMP?

EU Competition Cases Scraper connects to the same search API powering competition-cases.ec.europa.eu. Configure your instrument, filters, and maxItems, then run. Clean JSON comes out the other end.

How much does EU Competition Cases Scraper cost?

The pricing model is pay-per-result — approximately $0.002 per case record, plus a $0.10 platform fee per run. Scraping 1,000 merger cases costs roughly $2.10.

What data can I get from competition-cases.ec.europa.eu?

EU Competition Cases Scraper returns per-case metadata: case number and title, involved companies, instrument type, notification date, decision date and type, simplified procedure status, NACE sectors, member state countries, linked cases, press release references, and a direct URL to the EC detail page. Actual decision PDFs are linked on the EC detail page but not downloaded by this actor.

Can I filter by date range or country?

EU Competition Cases Scraper supports date range filters on decision date (decisionDateFrom, decisionDateTo), member state (country), NACE sector (policyArea), and decision type code (decisionType). Stack any combination.

Does EU Competition Cases Scraper need proxies?

No. The DG COMP API is a public EU government service with no access controls, rate limits, or geographic restrictions. The scraper runs without proxies.

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Need More Features?

Need custom fields, instrument combinations, or document download support? File an issue or get in touch.

Why Use EU Competition Cases Scraper?

• First Apify actor for EC competition cases — no comparable actor exists for the full DG COMP dataset across all four instruments
• Clean, normalized output — dates parsed, HTML stripped, arrays consistent, and a direct case URL ready to use, rather than a raw dump from the Elasticsearch index
• Affordable — ~$0.002/record with no proxy costs; bulk exports of 10,000+ merger cases run for around $20