Integrate or Separate - Institutional Design for the Enforcement of Competition Law and Consumer Law

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kati Cseres
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Design ◽  
Competition Law ◽  
Consumer Law

Part II The Member State Reports on Transposition of the Directive, 5 France

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chagny Muriel
Keyword(s):  
Member State ◽  
Dispute Resolution ◽  
Competition Law ◽  
Private Enforcement ◽  
Resolution Time ◽  
Binding Effect ◽  
French Government ◽  
Consumer Law ◽  
Class Actions ◽  
Joint And Several Liability

This chapter examines how the Antitrust Damages Directive has been transposed in France. It begins with an overview of the transposition procedure, focusing on the French private enforcement context from the Ordinance of 1 December 1986—the ‘Magna Carta’ of French competition law—to Law no. 2008-776 of 4 August 2008 and the Consumer Law Act of 17 March 2014 (Hamon Law). It then discusses the scope of the transposition measure, noting that the French government went beyond the Directive and instituted a single regime for damages actions, before analysing specific issues that arose during the transposition, including those relating to the concept of an undertaking, the binding effect of competition authorities' decisions, the presumption of harm, the passing-on of overcharges, types of harm and assessment of damages, joint and several liability and the recovery of contributions from co-infringers, consensual dispute resolution, time-barring deadlines, access to evidence, and class actions.

13 Enforcement

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheng Thomas K
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
General Public ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
Competition Law ◽  
Financial Resources ◽  
Competition Law Enforcement ◽  
The Government ◽  
Judicial Expertise ◽  
Policy Failures

This chapter explores the myriad difficulties and obstacles for competition law enforcement in developing countries and suggests possible solutions to some of these difficulties. Competition culture is generally lacking in developing countries. In addition, developing country authorities often face a particularly challenging enforcement environment due to past policy failures by the government, especially in the context of privatization. Another major external impediment to effective competition law enforcement is the lack of political will on the part of the government to enforce the law. The chapter also looks at the lack of authority independence, financial resources, enforcement powers, availability of data, and judicial expertise. Institutional design can have a bearing on setting of enforcement priorities. Poor institutional design may take flexibility away from the authority and make it impossible for the authority to set enforcement priorities. Apart from enforcement, however, another very important part of an authority’s work is advocacy. It is through advocacy with the general public that the authority can hope to build a competition culture. Meanwhile, it is through advocacy with the government that the authority can ensure government policies do not create intractable competition problems that are beyond the capability of the authority to solve. The chapter then considers the benefits and limitations of a regional approach to competition law enforcement. Enforcement and procedure

scholarly journals Infringers’ willingness to pay compensation versus fines

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pieter T. M. Desmet ◽  
Franziska Weber
Keyword(s):  
Willingness To Pay ◽  
Competition Law ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
Major Research ◽  
Consumer Law ◽  
Research Gap ◽  
Precautionary Measures ◽  
A Company

AbstractIn many areas such as consumer law or competition law, legislators can opt between two alternative forms of sanctions to remedy wrongdoing: they can impose an infringer to pay either a fine or a compensation. There is a major research gap regarding the infringers’ reactions to the different forms of sanctions. This paper reports an experiment that investigated infringers’ willingness to pay compensation versus fines. Results show that regardless of victim characteristics (whether the victim is a company or an NGO), infringers are willing to pay higher amounts in compensation than in fines, view compensation as more fair and believe compensation is better able to restore their reputation. Compensation and fines did not differ in the extent to which they stimulated infringers’ willingness to take precautionary measures. Participants who inflicted harm to a company rather than an NGO, surprisingly viewed their sanction as more fair, irrespective of the type of sanction in place. Our findings highlight some important strengths of compensation from a infringer’s point of view that are to be weighed in the policy debate.

scholarly journals Room to Manoeuvre for Member States: Issues for Decision on the Occasion of the Transposition of the Damages Directive

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Piszcz
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Design ◽  
Competition Law ◽  
Short Review ◽  
The Other ◽  
Private Enforcement ◽  
Member States ◽  
Is Implementation ◽  
Collective Redress ◽  
Eu Directives ◽  
National Legislatures

Soon Member States will bring into force the laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary to comply with the Damages Directive (2014/104/EU). Usually Member States do not seem willing to introduce a broader scope of the application of principles embodied in EU directives. For Member States, “copy-pasting” a directive's content into a piece of national legislation is one of the simplest ways to implement a directive (another very simple one is implementation by reference; it is just referring the reader to the directive and should not be applied where the rules in a directive are not sufficiently precise, so it is not applied very often). Member States that work on the implementation of the Damages Directive either do it in a minimalist manner, mainly "copy-pasting" its content, or take the legislative opportunity to do something more and "tidy up" domestic provisions on the occasion of the transposition of the Directive. Some Member States have chosen that last option. The article attempts to highlight some of the considerations that may be of particular relevance in this process, with the aim of formulating some recommendations for national legislatures, even though implementation works are drawing to a dose. First, some “spontaneous harmonisation” of a scope broader than that provided for in the Directive is recommended on the background of the material (substantive) scope of the Directive and its transposition. The other important considerations are addressed to the personal scope of the Directive and its transposition. Finally, the short review of some more detailed issues for decision on the occasion of the transposition of the Directive is offered. Considerations regarding the principle of civil liability, the use of collective redress mechanisms, minimum harmonisation clauses, institutional design of private enforcement of competition law, as well as incentives to voluntarily provide compensation to injured parties can be found therein.

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