The European Commission has approved the €4.1 billion acquisition of Just Eat Takeaway.com (JET) by Naspers, through its investment arm Prosus, after the technology group agreed to take concrete steps to reduce its influence in Europe’s food delivery market.
Prosus already holds a significant minority stake in Delivery Hero—one of the largest food delivery companies in Austria, Bulgaria, Italy, Poland and Spain—which operates popular brands such as Glovo, Foodora, and efood.
The Commission said the measures were necessary to prevent Naspers from having significant sway over two of the sector’s largest competitors, which could weaken competition and harm consumers.
"To address the Commission's concerns, Naspers offered to significantly reduce its shareholding in Delivery Hero, below a specified very low percentage, within 12 months and to implement a set of additional commitments," the EU body said in a statement.
"The Commission has the duty to assess mergers and acquisitions involving companies with a turnover above certain thresholds," the statement continued.
Why is this important?
In June 2025, the European Commission fined Delivery Hero and Glovo €329 million for operating a cartel—a high market concentration that lets them agree to drive up prices while not improving services—in the food delivery sector.
That case reinforced regulators’ concerns that without strict safeguards, large players may coordinate markets for profit instead of competing with both prices and quality.
Just Eat Takeaway.com runs familiar delivery platforms regularly used in Europe, such as Just Eat, Takeaway.com, Lieferando and others.
Between them, these companies would control a significant slice of Europe’s meal delivery market, which means most restaurants and customers would have limited alternatives.
The European online food delivery market is worth tens of billions annually and has grown rapidly since the pandemic, making it a critical part of urban economies.
This market has few big players, so any merger or ownership overlap can have an outsized impact on prices, restaurant commission rates and courier pay.
The €329 million fine against Delivery Hero and Glovo in June 2025 proves that colluding within the market is not a theoretical risk and that European regulators have already caught major players gaming the market to limit competition.
The deal is particularly notable as it is unusual for the Commission to demand a major sell-off of shares in another company or existing asset during a Phase I review, as it did on Monday.
This signals that Brussels is taking a harder line on digital platform consolidation, especially in markets where just two or three players dominate across the bloc.
