Extended Producer Responsibility is a resource management system whereby packaging producers take over the responsibility for the end of life management of their packaging, including collection, sorting and treating, and recovery. • Extended Producer Responsibility creates an obligation on packaging producers and importers, which is often taken care of collectively through the setting up of a Producer Responsibility Organisations to which this responsibility is outsourced. • Producer Responsibility Organisations are charged with ensuring the recovery of the used packaging by co-financing, organising and/or coordinating the collection, sorting and recycling of packaging waste. • Depending on the laws and regulations of a particular EU Member State, Producer Responsibility Organisations may be non-profit or for-profit companies. The latter type is generally owned by investors, which can be industry players at different levels of supply such as Waste Management Companies and/or recyclers (also, more recently, retailers)—thereby sometimes becoming vertically-integrated entities. • Vertical integration gives Producer Responsibility Organisations, at least theoretically, the ability and incentive to harm competitors in upstream and/or downstream markets by raising their prices through some form of refusal to supply, bundling of products, or leveraging—i.e. vertical foreclosure (input and/or customer). This allows the integrated entity to forgo some profits at one level of supply in order to may earn additional profits at a different level. This may result in rivals finding it more difficult to compete, either because they lose customers and/or forego economies of scale. • Vertically-integrated entities also give rise to a concrete risk of information leakage. That is, the potential flow of commercially sensitive competitor information to the vertically-integrated entity’s competing subsidiary via its other subsidiary operating at a different level of supply. This can lead to an integrated Producer Responsibility Organisation having an unfair advantage. • Vertical foreclosure and information leakage may coexist—potentially reinforcing the effects of each. • There is some evidence that in Estonia, Romania, and Slovenia, the market entry of verticallyintegrated entities has led to vertical foreclosure and information leakage. Non-integrated market players have reportedly seen their market share decrease to the benefit of vertically-integrated entities. In some cases, there has reportedly been a reduction in the collection of packaging waste and/or a reduction of collection, sorting and recycling facilities. • Conversely, in Czechia and Slovakia where vertical integration has not yet been allowed, no such effects have been reported. • In Germany, the national competition authority has blocked the vertical integration of a Waste Management and recycling company with a Producer Responsibility Organisation because of fears that this would lead to vertical foreclosure. • The EU and its Member States should remain vigilant in order to preserve the welfare of customers, consumers, and ultimately the environment by subjecting vertical mergers of PROs to careful scrutiny by competition authorities.