The draft bill for the Seventh Amendment to the GWB (GWB-E) contains, in addition to the alignment of German competition law with the European competition law reform and a series of procedural amendments in the area of merger control, fundamental proposals for changes to the rules governing mergers of press companies (press merger control). The draft proposes raising the specific thresholds for press mergers and introducing an exception to the prohibition criterion. The Monopolies Commission has decided to issue a separate special report on these proposed amendments, as this concerns a fundamental issue of competition policy. The issue at stake is whether the principle hitherto applied – namely, that journalistic diversity in the press sector is safeguarded through economic competition between independent companies – should be abandoned.