Vincent Smith considers how cartel victims could benefit from EU enforcement and compensation initiatives
Competition is seen as the essential way to make sure markets of all kinds deliver high-quality, keenly-priced goods and services. But the efficiency of the market mechanism is undermined by both cartel activity and abuse of market power—market “dominance”. To date the main method of tackling these competition law infringements has been through public enforcement either by the European Commission or by national competition authorities, eg the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) in the UK.
However, the European Commission has been considering how best to encourage private parties to enforce their right to redress where they are the victims of unlawful anti-competitive behaviour. It published the Green Paper on Damages Action for Breach of the EC Antitrust Rules in December 2005 and more recently (April 2006) the OFT has also published a discussion document, Private Actions in Competition Law: Effective Redress for Consumers and Business, on how to achieve the same aim in the UK. One of the main drivers behind these initiatives is the realisation that, given their necessarily finite
