Towards a harmonised collective redress mechanism for the private enforcement of EU competition law
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Towards a harmonised collective redress mechanism for the private enforcement of EU competition law Blanka Szupera1 · László Bánk Varga2 · Angéla Gábri3 · Bálint Gábor Kovács4
© Europäische Rechtsakademie (ERA) 2020
Abstract The paper investigates the collective redress mechanisms in the EU and tries to highlight the importance of harmonizing an effective collective redress mechanism. The Recommendation was a landmark in this development, and even thought it proposes a general collective solution, it is not binding for the Member States. The New Deal for Consumers package consists a proposal on representative actions for the protection of the collective interests, but it focuses only on consumers. This paper searches for an effective legal redress for those, who suffered mass harm from the infringement of EU competition law. Keywords Collective redress mechanism · Competition law · Procedural autonomy · Effectiveness · Private enforcement The article is a significantly revised version of the authors’ paper submitted to Semi-final C of the THEMIS Competition organised by the European Judicial Training Network (EJTN) in June 2018. The content of the article is entirely academic and does not in any way reflect the position of ERA, or that of Hungary’s National Office for the Judiciary.
B Dr B. Szupera
[email protected] Dr L. Bánk Varga [email protected] Dr A. Gábri [email protected] Dr B.G. Kovács [email protected]
1
Trainee Judge, National Office for the Judiciary, Budapest, Hungary
2
Trainee Judge, Szerencs District Court, Szerencs, Hungary
3
Trainee Judge, Debrecen District Court, Debrecen, Hungary
4
Judge, Szombathely Regional Court, Szombathely, Hungary
B. Szupera et al.
1 Introduction One stated goal of the Antitrust Damages Directive1 was to create a regulation based on the principles of efficiency and equivalence, without violating the procedural autonomy of the legal systems of the Member States. To lower the informational asymmetry between business and consumer, as well as the harmed party and the cartelist, and to enable access to justice to damaged individuals on a much wider scale. Almost simultaneously to the directive, the Commission issued its Recommendation on collective redress.2 The question is whether the introduced regulation is effective? It seems like the doctrine of injunctive collective redress is developing more dynamically than that of compensatory, therefore the question to us is how far the rules of law of the ECJ on collective redress are adaptable to the latter cases.
2 Harmonising: from Court decisions to the Recommendation Before the adoption of the Antitrust Damages Directive, institutions of the European Union have laid down some general legal principles on competition damages actions to encourage private litigation. The first relevant principle is the right to be fully compensated for the harm that victims suffered, as stated by the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) in the Manfredi (2006)3 and Courage v Crehan (2001)4 judgements.5 In
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