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2016.02.17.
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Thomas Thiede*
Private Enforcement of Anti-trust Damages in Europe A Germanic Perspective on Directive 2014/104/EU
Abstract If an undertaking infringes European or national competition law, the infringers must expect to face a large range of possible sanctions, of both a public law and a private law nature. Regarding the latter, we take note in this paper of anti-trust actions for damages by private claimants; these have become ever more significant in the anti-trust debate. Against a background of divergent developments in the European Member States, the European legislator has adopted Directive 2014/104/EU,1 with the aim of facilitating the full compensation of damage suffered by those affected by violations of European or national competition law, and to coordinate public and private enforcement measures. The Member States must implement this Directive into their national systems. This paper gives an overview of the Directive, analyses its most important provisions and then discusses the international issues raised in cases concerning crossborder anti-competitive activities.
* Dr.iur., Dipl.-Jur., LL.B., LL.M., Institute for European Tort Law of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the University of Graz, as well as the Centre of European Private law of the University of Graz; Fellow, European Centre of Tort and Insurance Law (ECTIL), Vienna, Austria. I wish to express my sincere thanks to three fine colleagues, Fiona Saltor-Townshend, Bernhard A Koch and Andrew Bell for agreeing to undertake the at times tedious task of discussing and reviewing the original research, as well as earlier versions of this paper. Additionally, I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for revealing crucial issues which needed to be addressed. Last but not least, my thanks go to Sonja Akbal for making the literature for the original research available. The author can be contacted at mail@thomasthiede.info. 1 Directive 2014/104/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 November 2014 on certain rules governing actions for damages under national law for infringements of the competition law provisions of the Member States and of the European Union Text with EEA relevance, OJ 2014 L349, 1 ff (DADA).
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