Article: Assignment and Bundling of Antitrust Claims as an Alternative to Collective Consumer Compensatory Redress in Croatia

Abstract

Over the last decade, there has been a proliferation of mass antitrust damages cases before national courts of Member States. The procedural landscape varies very much, however, a number of MS have some form of compensatory and/or injunctive collective tool for consumers and other categories of victims from antitrust violations. Croatia has no such system in place, so the purpose of this article is to analyse the potential and limits of assignment and bundling of claims as an alternative to a full-fledged collective compensatory redress mechanism. The paper identifies advantages and possible disadvantages and limitations of this tool. The author argues, that while the general rules of contract law offer wide discretion and possibilities to organize a ‘collective’ action for damages though mass assignment, it falls short of consumer protection measures. competition law, assignment of claims, collective consumer protection, antitrust damages, EU, Croatia