The assessment of damages resulting from anti-competitive practices following the transposition of Directive 2014/104/EU
from Maurice NUSSENBAUM, publisched in © LEXISNEXIS SA – LA SEMAINE JURIDIQUE – ENTREPRISE ET AFFAIRES – MAI 2022
Since the introduction of Directive 2014/104/EU of 26 November 2014 (the Directive) and its transposition into French law on 9 March 2017, the ECJ’s aim has been to make remedies for private damages more effective. To this end, it has sought to remove certain evidential difficulties for victims.
Although case law in France is still recent in relation to these texts, since they only apply to cases brought after they came into force, there have already beenenough applications for an initial assessment to be made.
The decisions reviewed in this study illustrate various contributions which these texts have made: the concept of an economic entity (the Skanska judgment), the 5-year limitation period, the presumption of damage (the Dortmund judgment), the issue of compensatory interest and loss of opportunity, ‘passing on’ reviewed on several occasions, and the disclosure of documents that is necessary but must not infringe business confidentiality.
It can be noted that, even though the application of the texts is uneven, they have already helped to strengthen victims’ rights in obtaining compensation for damage caused by infringements of the competition rules.
