"I am now satisfied that competition and innovation will be preserved on all the markets concerned," said EU competition commissioner Neelie Kroes, in a statement. "Oracle's acquisition of Sun has the potential to revitalise important assets and create new and innovative products."

While the merger still needs approval from Russia and China regulators, but Oracle expects "unconditional approval" from those countries and "intends to close the transaction shortly."

The EU's probe was into whether the Oracle deal would hurt competition in the database market. With the  of Sun, Oracle gains control of the world's most widely-used Open Source database MySQL.

"The Commission's in-depth investigation showed that although MySQL and Oracle compete in certain parts of the database market, they are not close competitors in others, such as the high-end segment,"  said the EU statement. It also found that the OS PostgreSQL database is a legitimate, independent alternative to MySQL, and determined that the merger would not harm users' access to Sun's Java development platform.

Oracle executives argue the acquisition of Sun allows their company to offer a complete portfolio of products and services and help spare customers the frustration of having to build business IT systems from piece parts.

Some product shed in the scientific arena
European Union regulatory authorities have also granted antitrust clearance of Agilent's proposed $1.5bn acquisition of Varian in July 2009, tagged with conditions that include the sale of certain product lines. The deal  expands Agilent's product portfolio into atomic and molecular spectroscopy and in other fields including nuclear magnetic resonance, imaging, and vacuum technologies, as well as increase its presence in certain life science, environmental, and energy markets.

Though the firms had expected to close the acquisition by the end of 2009, it has been delayed by reviews from both EU and US antitrust bodies. But Agilent said that the EU has cleared the deal, with conditions that include the sale of product lines accounting for revenues of "under $100m" in 2009.

The product lines to be sold include Varian's laboratory gas chromatography business, its triple quadrupole gas chromatography-mass spectrometry business, and its inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry business.
Agilent has committed to sell its micro gas chromatography business.

"The European Commission's decision is a key milestone toward completing the transaction that will bring our two firms together," Agilent President and CEO Bill Sullivan (left) said. "We are committed to ensuring that each of these four businesses is successfully divested as a viable, competitive business and that all customers remain fully supported during and beyond the divestiture process."

Though clearance by the US Federal Trade Commission is still pending, the firms said that they do not expect any additional remedies, beyond those being taken in Europe being needed to satisfy the FTC. The merger partners expect to close the deal early this year.