By JIM RUTLEDGE

D.C. Correspondent

BRUSSELS — With only two months before its March 5 deadline to approve or block the $63.5 billion merger between the Germany chemical conglomerate Bayer AG with U.S. seed giant St. Louis-based Monsanto Co., the European Commission has issued former objections to the mega-deal that would create the world’s largest seed company.

According to a report out of Europe on Dec. 19 by the media company Politico EU, the European regulator has sent a list of undisclosed issues to the Leverkusen, Germany-based agrichemical company seeking “more significant concessions,” before the European Union will move ahead to approve the merger – under intense scrutiny since it was announced 12 months ago.

Farm World could not independently confirm the report; both the Commission and Bayer declined to respond to email inquiries. The Politico report cited two undisclosed people who had been briefed on the case. Utz Klages, a spokesperson for Bayer, told Politico, “We do not comment on rumors.”

The Commission has the power to either block the merger or demand divestments by the companies. In early December, the deal edged close to overcoming U.S. regulatory hurdles when the Committee of Foreign Investments in the U.S. (CFIUS) completed its review and found no security risks to block the deal.

CFIUS is the federal agency that screens proposed foreign investments for national security concerns, and includes officials from the departments of Treasury, Defense, State, Justice and Commerce.

The two companies have said they hope to win U.S. and EU antitrust approval in March.

Bayer CEO Werner Baumann had said in a Reuter’s news report last month that the antitrust review has undergone “unimaginable depths” in examining the deal. “To illustrate the point,” Baumann said, “we have by now delivered more than 4 million pages of documents to the EU Commission.”

Last fall, as the deal faced increased scrutiny, Bayer said it pushed back the expected closing date from the end of 2017 to early 2018. At the time, the company too reduced the value of the merger from $66 billion to $63.5 billion, after Monsanto lowered its financial liabilities.

To meet earlier regulatory issues, Bayer in October said it was selling off its crop science division to its German competitor, BASF, for about $7 billion.

Meanwhile, since the deal was first announced, a coalition of 210 U.S. farm groups have come out against the mega-merger, complaining about the rapid consolidation in the food chain that has left a handful of multinational companies controlling food production. The groups said the deal will push down prices for farmers and lower farm workers’ wages, while at the same time driving up food costs and limiting choices for consumers.

Greg Fogel, policy director for the National Sustainable Agricultural Coalition, told Farm World recently that corporate takeovers are driving small- and medium-scale farms out of business while corporate agribusinesses are rapidly expanding.

“Without a fair playing field, these corporations can easily drive out family farmers, or relegate them to working within opaque and unfair contract systems,” he said.

Since last summer more than a dozen farm groups and others have urged the state attorneys general for Missouri and New York to investigate the merger, saying that the combination would hurt farmers and their states’ agriculture industries. In November, 15 organizations submitted petitions signed by more than 1 million people to the U.S. Department of Justice calling on antitrust regulators to reject the merger.

“A merger between Bayer and Monsanto is a five-alarm threat to our food supply and to farmers around the world,” said Angus Wong, campaign manager with SumOfUs, one of the groups that led the petition drive.

If the Bayer-Monsanto merger is approved, the nonprofit group Farmers and Families First allege farmers using Monsanto cottonseeds will see prices increased by 19.23 percent, while farmers using Bayer’s brand would see a hike of 17.41 percent.

The merger would also create the world’s largest manufacturer and seller of herbicides, and 77 percent of the corn seed in America would be controlled by Bayer-Monsanto and DowDuPont.