[No. 12] The Competition Commisioner Designate and a Report on Quantification of Damages

Last week European Parliament questioned Competition Commissioner designate Joaqín Almunia. A summary of the hearing can be found here. Almunia answered inter alia questions about collective redress. Almunia supported the view of some MEP´s that Parliament should be more involved in the design of EU collective redress measures. This statement must be seen against the background that the current draft proposal of Competition Commissioner Kroes was not sent to Parliament after an intervention from Barosso because of criticism from some MEP´s (see Post nr. 57-2009). This means that the current proposal will probably not come into effect any time soon. Almunia stated in respect of collective redress that "it will be important to develop effective co-ordination procedures and to avoid abuse, as has happened in the US class action system." Again: to be continued.

Meanwhile the Commission's ambition for more private enforcement has not disappeared. Last week a study on the quantification of harm caused by competition law infringements was published by the Commission. This report was promised by the Commission on the occasion of the proposal about private enforcement which I mentioned above. The purpose of the study is to provide national judges with some guidance to be better able to calculate antitrust damages. In the study various methods of damage calculation are described. The best method to be applied depends inter alia on the available data. In most cases it will be possible to use more than one method. The report also describes a couple of (hypothetical) case studies and indicates how the damage in these cases could be calculated. Although it is a rather technical report with – not surprisingly – a lot of economic models, I think it is a helpful report for judges and lawyers when it comes to a calculation of damages in case of antitrust infringements.