Private Antitrust Enforcement: A New Era for Collective Redress?

Sofia Oliveira Pais, Professor of Law, Faculty of Law, Catholic University of Portugal, Jean Monnet Chair, Researcher and Coordinator of the Católica Research Centre for the Future of Law (Porto, Portugal)Follow

Keywords

Recommendation 2013/396/EU, collective redress mechanisms, legal standing, funding, forum shopping, popular action

Abstract

It will be argued in this article that the EU Recommendation on common principles for collective redress might have limited impact on the field of competition law due to: several uncertainties regarding the legal standing in class actions; difficulties in their funding; and the risk of forum shopping with cross-border actions. Neverthe-less, Belgium and Great Britain have recently introduced class actions into their national legal systems and addressed some of the difficulties which other Member States were experiencing already. It will also be suggested that the Portuguese model – the ‘Popular Action’ – and recent Portuguese practice may be considered an interesting example to follow in order to overcome some of the identified obsta-cles to private antitrust enforcement.

Recommended Citation

Oliveira Pais, S. (2015). Private Antitrust Enforcement: A New Era for Collective Redress?. Yearbook of Antitrust and Regulatory Studies, 8(12), 11-32. Retrieved from https://press.wz.uw.edu.pl/yars/vol8/iss12/1