Towards a European Directive on Damages Actions

This paper critically reviews the European Commission’s proposed Directive on future rules concerning actions for damages for competition law infringements under national law. It is argued that the proposal underestimates the importance of loss of profits induced by increased prices and does little in ensuring that such effects will receive an equal treatment to price effects in damage claims. The paper suggests that the importance of such effects could have been emphasized by introducing a rebuttable presumption on lucrum cessans based on pass-on considerations – paralleling the presumption on overcharge. Furthermore, the decision to leave questions of causality to national tort laws is criticized as a harmonized regulation of claims based on the merits of the evidence presented would have been a superior tool, in line with a more economic approach and better suited for achieving the goal of compensation for any victim due to its intrinsic flexibility. Finally the notion that legally relevant damages only accrue within a vertical value chain is challenged.