How to Facilitate Damage Claims? Private Enforcement of Competition Rules in Croatia – Domestic and EU Law Perspective

摘要

Ever since the Croatian Competition Agency started functioning in 1997, publicenforcement of competition law has been the norm. Civil actions for breaches ofcompetition law have been the exception in Croatia. The existing legislation in thearea of competition law makes no effort to incentivise private enforcement. Thereare no specific rules in the Competition Act 2009 dedicated to civil actions, except asingle provision that assigns jurisdiction over damages claims to commercial courts.General tort law is applicable in order to prove damages. A number of issues arisehere mostly due to the complexity of competition cases. These issues were describedin the European Commission’s White Paper on Damages Actions for Breach ofEC Antitrust Rules (2008). The level of uncertainty as regards the outcome of theclaim is high. It seems that special rules need to be adopted in Croatia in orderto improve the position of the injured side. The paper deals with a number ofprocedural and substantive law issues relevant to the facilitation of civil proceedingsfor antitrust damages. A domestic law perspective is applied taking into accountrecent developments in EU competition law and policy.