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Parcu, Pier Luigi; Monti, Giorgio; Botta, Marco --- "Introduction" [2018] ELECD 745; in Parcu, L. Pier; Monti, Giorgio; Botta, Marco (eds), "Private Enforcement of EU Competition Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018) 1

Book Title: Private Enforcement of EU Competition Law

Editor(s): Parcu, L. Pier; Monti, Giorgio; Botta, Marco

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN: 9781786438805

Section: Chapter 1

Section Title: Introduction

Author(s): Parcu, Pier Luigi; Monti, Giorgio; Botta, Marco

Number of pages: 14

Abstract/Description:

A long time has passed since Advocate General (AG) Geelhoed stated in his Opinion in Manfredi that ‘private enforcement of (competition law) in Europe is still in its infancy’. One decade after the landmark ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), the number of antitrust claims in national civil courts has steadily increased, though major differences exist among the EU Member States. In particular, the UK, Germany and the Netherlands have become the preferred fora by claimants in cross-border actions, while the majority of the other Member States have not recorded many antitrust damages cases. In term of remedies, however, claimants often request either injunctive relief or contract invalidation, rather than damages. Finally, industrial customers, rather than final consumers, start most of the legal actions, even in the countries where private enforcement of EU competition law is more developed. During the past decade, the EU Commission has actively promoted damages actions for breaches of EU competition rules. During this period of time, the pendulum of the policy discourse followed by the EU executive branch has swung between the goal of increasing the number of damages claims in national courts on the one hand, and the idea of establishing a level playing field among the EU Member States in terms of applicable procedural rules, in order to discourage forum shopping on the other. In the initial 2005 Green Paper, the EU Commission emphasized that damages actions should ‘deter’ competition law violations.