Private Antitrust Enforcement: A New Era for Collective Redress? Guest Article 12 Yearbook of Antitrust and Regulatory Studies 2015

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12 YARS 11 (2015)
Private Antitrust Enforcement: A New Era for Collective Redress?

handle is hein.journals/yars12 and id is 13 raw text is:

GU EST AR T ICLE

Private Antitrust Enforcement: A New Era for Collective Redress?

by

Sofia Oliveira Pais*

CONTENTS
I. Introduction
II. The European Recommendation 2013/396/EU of 11 June 2013
1. General remarks
2. Opt-in vs. opt-out models
3. Funding
4. Cross-border mass disputes
III. The new Belgian and British laws on consumer collective redress
IV. The experience of collective redress in Portugal: the Popular Action
V Conclusions

Abstract

It will be argued in this article that the EU Recommendation on common principles
for collective redress might have limited impact on the field of competition law due
to: several uncertainties regarding the legal standing in class actions; difficulties in
their funding; and the risk of forum shopping with cross-border actions. Neverthe-
less, Belgium and Great Britain have recently introduced class actions into their
national legal systems and addressed some of the difficulties which other Member
States were experiencing already. It will also be suggested that the Portuguese
model - the 'Popular Action' - and recent Portuguese practice may be considered
an interesting example to follow in order to overcome some of the identified obsta-
cles to private antitrust enforcement.

* Professor of Law, Faculty of Law, Catholic University of Portugal, Jean Monnet Chair,
Researcher and Coordinator of the Cat6lica Research Centre for the Future of Law (Porto,
Portugal); e-mail: sofiaopais@gmail.com.

DOI: 10.7172/1689-9024.YARS.2015.8.12.1

VOL. 2015,8(12)