‘A decision devoid of any proper argument’, according to the authors. By allowing the takeover, the government ignored the decision of the ACM (Netherlands Authority for Consumers & Markets) to block the merger. This is argued to be an example of  ‘unprecedented political interference in independent competition regulation’. Together with Bert Tieben and Christian Behrens of SEO, the authors estimate that this takeover could end up costing the public up to 1 billion euro in the next 5 years.