Actions for Damages in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Germany

Abstract

This survey will discuss the developments with regard to claims for damages resulting from competition law infringements in the three most prominent jurisdictions in this area: the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Germany. This survey relates to the period July 2016–September 2017.1 The main focus of this survey is on recent case law following Articles 101 and/or 102 TFEU infringements. Section 2 discusses the legislative developments in each of the respective jurisdictions, with a focus on developments in relation to the implementation of the directive on the rules governing actions for damages for infringements of competition law (2014/104/EU) (‘Directive’) and further developments in the area of collective redress. Developments in follow-on damages claims in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Germany will for each of these jurisdictions be discussed in Section 2. Recurring topics here are, amongst others, the passing-on defence, access to evidence, standard of proof and limitation periods. Section 3 discusses standalone damages claims in the three jurisdictions, divided by horizontal and vertical cases on the one hand and abuse of dominance cases on the other.