After the Damages Directive: Policy and Practice in the EU Member States and the United Kingdom

Designed to deter anticompetitive conduct and to ensure full compensation for loss and damage caused by competition infringements, the Antitrust Damages Directive has become a crucial factor in companies’ risk management planning. This first book of its kind offers a comparative overview, practical and authoritative, of the implementation and application of private enforcement rules in each EU Member State as well as in the post-Brexit United Kingdom, covering legislation and case law to date. For leading jurisdictions where practice is already well developed, there are more detailed chapters, with perspectives of judges, competition authorities, practitioners, and economists.

The contributors – all experts in the use of EU competition law in their respective jurisdictions – cover the provisions of the Directive in detail, including the following:

• requirement of full compensation;

• rules preventing overcompensation;

• court’s power to estimate damages that cannot be precisely quantified;

• joint and several liability for infringing undertakings;

• coordination between public and private enforcement;

• provisions related to passing-on;

• certain rules on admissibility of evidence;

• rules on limitation periods; and

• consensual dispute resolution.

In its detailed explanations of shared best practices and its highlighting of opportunities for convergence, the book provides much-needed insight into judicial practice and thinking, the economic approaches and strategies relevant to damages, and the coordination between public and private enforcement. These expert views will prove invaluable for practitioners wishing to see how the law and practice might evolve in their own jurisdictions, as well as into the problems that have arisen or might arise in the future.