by Maria José Costeira, Portuguese Judge at the General Court of the CJEU
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The transposition of the Private Enforcement Directive: a critical perspective
On 26th November 2014 the Directive 2014/104/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council 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 was approved. That directive, usually called Directive Enforcement, has to be transposed into national law by Member States until the 27th December 2016 (Article 21).
In Portugal, the National Competition Authority (Autoridade da Concorrência – AdC) entity in charge of preparing the transposition, presented, on the 22nd June 2016, the last proposal of a preliminary draft[i] for the transposition, which resulted from a process of public discussion.
Here, I intend to draw attention to some aspects that could be improved in the proposal.
Article 2 of the proposal gives the definition of cartel as “the agreement or concerted action between two or more competing companies which aims at coordinating their competition behaviour in the market or influencing the relevant competition standards through acts such as, namely, fixing or coordinating the prices of acquisition or sell or other conditions of transactions, including in relation to rights of intellectual property, attribution of production or sell quotas, sharing markets and clients, including the concertation in auctions and public procurements, restricting importations or exportations or conducting anti-competitive acts against other competitors as prohibited by Article 9 of the Law nº. 19/2012, of 8th May, and if applicable by Article 101, TFEU”.
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