EU Official Supports Private Antitrust Suits
Europe should consider allowing U.S.-style private lawsuits to help it enforce antitrust laws, says European Competition Commissioner Mario Monti.
Almost 90% of antitrust enforcement in the U.S. is through private civil suits, compared with almost none in the European Union.
Litigation by customers has forced companies such as Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest software maker, to settle claims and allowed businesses such as Coca-Cola Co. to win damages for price-fixing violations.
“We have been looking in many cases to the U.S. experience, not necessarily imitating them wholesale but looking at what is good in them,” Monti said in an interview in New York. “We believe it is possible, indeed necessary, to go some way toward the U.S. system.”
The EU must avoid some aspects of the U.S. system, such as excessive class-action suits, said Monti, whose term ends Oct. 31.
He also acknowledged a possible conflict between seeking to encourage private litigation and simultaneously promoting whistle-blowing and leniency programs that encourage companies to produce incriminating information that could lead to a lawsuit.
“Supplying that information has a huge advantage of implying immunity from fines, and that is a big incentive, which will remain,” Monti said. “In the U.S. we can see the healthy coexistence between private enforcement and leniency.”
Monti, in New York to attend an antitrust conference at Fordham University School of Law, said that to encourage litigation, the European Commission might have to provide more access to its files to potential litigants although “there will have to be limitations.”
The commission, the EU’s Brussels-based regulatory arm, is currently contesting a request by an Austrian consumer association in the European Court of First Instance in Luxembourg.
The group is seeking access to its files on the Lombard bank cartel case, in which a group of Austrian and German banks were fined for price fixing. The consumer body says it needs the files to successfully sue the banks for damages.
Under changes introduced during Monti’s five-year term, the commission handed greater control over antitrust laws to national courts, partly in a bid to allow private citizens and companies to obtain damages. That’s currently unavailable through the European Court of Justice, the EU’s highest court.
Francois Souty, counsel for international affairs at the French Competition Council, said the commission would have to work toward ensuring some sort of coherence in European litigation if it were to achieve its goal.
The commission “may have to think in terms of changing Europe-wide laws, or at least defining what should be the bottom line in terms of the results that can be achieved through national courts,” Souty said.
