Link: https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2025-01/cp250008en.pdf

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Compensation for harm caused by a cartel: national legislation preventing a group action for collection may infringe EU law

This will be the case where national law does not provide for any other collective means of bringing together individual claims of persons harmed by a cartel and where it is impossible or excessively difficult to bring an individual action for damages

EU law allows any person to claim damages for loss caused to him or her by an infringement of competition law. It is for each Member State to determine the rules governing the exercise of that right, in the light in particular of the principle of effectiveness. To prohibit a group action for collection, brought by a legal services provider on the basis of compensation rights assigned to it by a large number of injured persons may compromise the effectiveness of EU law. That is the case where national law does not provide any other collective means of grouping together individual claims and where it is impossible or excessively difficult to bring an individual action seeking to assert that right to compensation.

Thirty two sawmills established in Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg claim to have suffered on account of a cartel in respect of which the Land Nordrhein-Westfalen (Land of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany) charged, at least from 28 June 2005 to 30 June 2019, inflated prices for the sale to those sawmills of roundwood from that Land.

Each of the sawmills in question assigned its right to compensation for the harm to the company ASG 2. As a ‘provider of legal services’, within the meaning of the German law, that company brought a group action for damages before a German court against the Land, in its own name and at its own expense, but on behalf of the sawmills, in return for fees in the event of success.

The Land disputes ASG 2’s legal standing to bring proceedings. It submits that the German legislation, as interpreted by certain national courts, 1 does not entitle that provider to bring a group action for collection in the context of an infringement of competition law. (...)