14 September 2016, 21:00 GMT
MOSCOW (Sputnik) — On Wednesday, Monsanto officially confirmed that Bayer would acquire the company for $66 billion, and the deal had been approved by both companies’ boards of directors. The potential merger raises deep concerns of farmers and environmentalists.
"What is important for us is that post-merger, farmers have choice… That they are not locked with just one producer and just one set of pesticides," Vestager said.
According to the Commissioner, the market is "quite concentrated already," and at the same time "very consolidated" in terms of companies doing research and development in order to innovate plant protection to make it more environmentally friendly.
"It has actually somewhat diminished [over the past ten years] and you have very few global players engaged in this [new plant protection development]," the commissioner added.
