En un conjunto de 15 sentencias de casación, el Tribunal Supremo resuelve cuestiones fundamentales para la aplicación privada del Derecho de la Competencia en la jurisdicción española pero que se ...proyectan sobre el resto de los Estados miembros en procedimientos muy similares. Estas sentencias analizan, entre otras cosas, la facultad del juez para estimar los daños y perjuicios, la (no) necesidad de acceder a las fuentes de prueba inter partes, la proporcionalidad y las normas para los informes periciales económicos, así como los intereses y la prescripción. Las quince sentencias condenan a los miembros del cártel de camiones a indemnizar a diversos compradores de camiones con un porcentaje mínimo del 5% del valor de la compraventa más intereses. Este cartel ha generado la mayor ola de litigación antitrust en Europa tanto a nivel nacional como ante el TJUE que se ha pronunciado ya en diversas ocasiones, la más reciente en el asunto Tráficos Manuel Ferrer.
Infringements of competition law can cause serious harm to both consumers and undertakings. Aside from the development of public enforcement of competition law, much focus has been placed in recent ...years in the European Union on private competition law enforcement. Lawsuits raised by undertakings that sustained damages from anti-competitive practice concerning the compensation of such damages have historically not been widespread in Europe. No such cases have been recorded in Albania at all yet, despite the fact that its competition protection legislation has provided this possibility since 1995. The main causes of the lack of private competition law enforcement in Albania include the absence of judicial practice and doctrinal approaches in this area. Relevant here is also the inability of Albanian businesses and consumers to react to competition protection cases as they still lack competition law knowledge and as a result of the absence of an appropriate legal framework for class actions. The scope of this article is to analyze the current situation of private competition law enforcement in Albania. The paper emphasizes the current legal framework including existing obstacles to private competition law enforcement and improvements that should be introduced in the context of its competition law, the law of civil procedures and the law of obligations.
The aim of this paper is to critically analyze the manner of harmonizing private enforcement in the EU. The paper examines the legal rules and, more importantly, the actual enforcement practice of ...collective consumer actions in EU Member States situated in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Collective actions are the key method of getting compensation for consumers who have suffered harm as a result of an anti-competitive practice. Consumer compensation has always been the core justification for the European Commission’s policy of encouraging private enforcement of competition law. In those cases where collective redress is not available to consumers, or consumers cannot apply existing rules or are unwilling to do so, then both their right to an effective remedy and the public policy goal of private enforcement remain futile. Analyzing collective compensatory actions in CEE countries (CEECs) places the harmonization process in a broader governance framework, created during their EU accession, characterized by top-down law-making and strong EU conditionality. Analyzing collective consumer actions through this ‘Europeanization’ process, and the phenomenon of vertical legal transplants, raises major questions about the effectiveness of legal transplants vis-à-vis homegrown domestic law-making processes. It also poses the question how such legal rules may depend and interact with market, constitutional and institutional reforms.
The paper explores the changes the EU Directive on harmonizing certain rules governing actions for damages under national law for infringements of the competition law provisions will bring about in ...Hungary, with a special focus placed on damages liability rules, the interaction of public and private enforcement of these rules, and the importance of class actions. Amendments of the Competition Act introduced in 2005 and 2009 had created new rules to promote the idea of private enforcement even before the Directive was adopted. Some of these rules remain unique even now, notably the legal presumption of a 10% price increase for cartel cases. However, subsequent cases decided by Hungarian courts did not reflect the sophistication of existing substantive and procedural rules. There has only ever been one judgment awarding damages, while most stand-alone cases involved minor competition law issues relating to contractual disputes. The paper looks at the most important substantial rules of tort law (damage, causality, joint and several liability), the co-operation of competition authorities and civil courts, as well as at (the lack of) class action procedures from the perspective of the interaction of public and private enforcement of competition law.
The article focuses on the concept of passing-on of overcharges and the peculiarities of its regulation by the Damages Directive. The Damages Directive obliges Member States to ensure that the ...defendant in an action for damages may invoke the passing-on defence. Moreover, the Directive establishes the new framework and the main principles that govern the application of the passing-on defence. The national case law on passing-on is very insignificant in Central and Eastern European countries and many questions are expected to be raised in the courts of the CEE Member States. While discussing the concept of passing-on in the Damages Directive, a lot of emphasis should be paid to the issue of causation. Causation will definitely be the subject of most of the questions in cases when an indirect purchaser will bring a claim for damages. Causation may be tricky when an indirect purchaser claims it suffered an ‘overcharge harm’ because of passing-on. In most cases, the issue of causation will be decided mainly by national courts based on national procedural rules. Depending on the situation, passing-on may be used as a basis for the claim (as a ‘sword’) or as a defence (as a ‘shield’). It could be used as a basis for the claim by an indirect purchaser, in case s/he has suffered any harm because of the illegal actions of a cartelist or a dominant company. At the same time, it could be used as a defence by the infringer against a claim for damages. The article also analyses the specifics of the implementation of the Directive into the national laws of CEE Member States
Proving the Grounds for Compensation – Reflections on Private Enforcement in the Polish Cement Cartel Case. Case Comment to the Judgment of the Court of Appeals in Cracow of 10 January 2014 (Ref. No ...I ACa 1322/13)
The article focuses on the novelties introduced by the Damages Directive in the field of consensual settlements of disputes concerning private enforcement. The Damages Directive obliges Member States ...to ensure that the limitation period for bringing an action for damages is suspended for the duration of any consensual dispute resolution process. The Directive also establishes the main principles that govern the effect of consensual settlements on subsequent actions for damages. Since the EU framework for consensual dispute resolution of private enforcement disputes is quite new, many issues must still be solved in Member States’ practice. While analysing consensual dispute resolution in private enforcement cases, particular interest should be paid to mediation and arbitration as a form of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). Mediation is often used in competition law litigation. In a mediation process, parties are subject to fewer legal costs than in litigation and arbitration. It may thus be concluded that consensual dispute resolution is usually a faster way to receive compensation. However, voluntary arrangements and ADR in competition law still raise many problems concerning both procedural and substantial legal acts.
The article reviews the jurisprudence of Lithuanian courts on private enforcement of competition law and identifies the main obstacles for the development of this practice. The analysis of the ...jurisprudence makes it possible to summarise that: most rulings of the Lithuanian courts relate to cases on the abuse of dominance; usually, dominant undertakings were allegedly applying discriminatory conditions towards the injured party and; most of the claims were presented as follow-on actions after a decision of the Competition Council. The courts held that damages caused by a breach of competition law have to be recovered in accordance with Lithuania’s main principles of civil responsibility. At the same time, the courts made it clear that their jurisprudence is based on the rulings of European Courts and the main principles of EU competition law. The main obstacles for the successful development of antitrust damages claims in Lithuania are, inter alia: complexity of competition cases; difficulty in obtaining substantive evidence; proving a consequential relationship and; high legal costs. The article also analyses substantial and procedural provisions of Lithuanian legislation that regulate the submission of antitrust damage claims.
The article reviews judgments of Polish courts on private enforcement of competition law between 1993 and 2012. A quantitative analysis of this jurisprudence shows that very few cases of that type ...exist at all. Their qualitative characteristics illustrate that: none of them referred to consumers; none of the claims was a ‘pure’ damage claim; all of these cases focused on partial or general nullity of contracts concluded as a result of an anticompetitive practice; almost all of them concerned an abuse of a dominant position; only one referred to competition-restricting agreements. The relevant jurisprudence largely focused on the binding force of a prior decision of the Polish competition body upon civil courts. Even if the fact that some cases of this type were at all record might suggest that there is a potential for developing private enforcement of antitrust in Poland, nothing like this actually happened. Unfortunately, the Act on Collective Redress (in force since July 2010) has not contributed to a growth in the number of consumers (or any other entities) engaging in court disputes with undertakings restricting competition
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