The much-awaited Random House and Penguin merger finally receives the approval of the European Union Commission.

Last year, Random House and Penguin announced their decision to merge, thus creating the world's largest publishing house. The U.S. department of Justice was the first to give the two companies its approval for merger. Australia and New Zealand followed suit a few months later. China and Canada are also examining the proposed merger. Up until now, the European Union Commission has not given the merger its go-ahead nod. Now, The Guardian reports that the regulatory body has finally given the merger the green signal by approving of it.

The European commission announced Friday that it had cleared the deal for the venture, which will reportedly account for one in every four books sold in the U.K. However, according to the EU commission, the publishing house will continue to witness tough competition from other companies like Amazon and HarperCollins.

"The new entity Penguin Random House will continue to face competition from several large and numerous small and medium sized publishers," the commission said. "The merged entity will furthermore face a concentrated retail base, such as supermarkets for print books and large online retailers for ebooks, like Amazon."

Even though the EU commission's approval took more than 6 months to come through, owners of Random House and Penguin, Bertelsmann and Pearson were quite confident that the clearance would come through eventually. However, approval from China and Canada are yet to come through.

"The two companies welcome the European commission's decision: it marks another important stage on the way to completing their proposed transaction," said Bertelsmann in a statement. "The two companies are confident that the [last remaining] approvals will be forthcoming during the course of the year."