Abstract
The paper explores the changes the EU Directive on harmonizing certain rules governing actions for damages under national law for infringements of the competition law provisions will bring about in Hungary, with a special focus placed on damages liability rules, the interaction of public and private enforcement of these rules, and the importance of class actions. Amendments of the Competition Act introduced in 2005 and 2009 had created new rules to promote the idea of private enforcement even before the Directive was adopted. Some of these rules remain unique even now, notably the legal presumption of a 10% price increase for cartel cases. However, subsequent cases decided by Hungarian courts did not reflect the sophistication of existing substantive and procedural rules. There has only ever been one judgment awarding damages, while most stand-alone cases involved minor competition law issues relating to contractual disputes. The paper looks at the most important substantial rules of tort law (damage, causality, joint and several liability), the co-operation of competition authorities and civil courts, as well as at (the lack of) class action procedures from the perspective of the interaction of public and private enforcement of competition law.
Highlights
This paper explores the changes the EU Directive on certain rules governing actions for damages under national law for infringements of the competition law provisions1 will bring about in Hungary, with a special focus placed on damages liability rules, the interaction of public and private enforcement of these rules, and the importance of class actions
After outlining the rules introduced in 2005 and 2009, the part of the paper is devoted to summarizing the practice of national civil law courts applying competition law. After recalling those main points of the Directive which deal with the interaction of public and private enforcement of competition rules, it will be concluded that new procedural rules, important they seem to be, do not immediately result in more complaints being filed before courts
Hungary had already put in place procedural rules to encourage private enforcement of Hungarian and EU competition rules back in 2005 and later in 2009
Summary
T I C Peer-reviewed scientific periodical, focusing on legal and economic issues of antitrust and regulation.
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