White Paper on Private Enforcement

The Commissioner for Competition, Mrs Neelie Kroes, has just presented her White Paper on Damages Actions for Breach of the EC Antitrust Rules.

What is it about? In the future, consumers, "as a group", could be allowed to go to court either via a stand-alone action or  following  the decision of public  competition authorities  to be  compensated  for damages suffered due to anti-competitive behaviour.

We  have  been  waiting  a  long  time  for  concrete measures  which  would  finally  allow  consumers  to genuinely benefit  from Community  competition policy. With  the publication  of  the White  Paper,  our hopes are starting to take shape.

Although we  still have  to  consider  it  in more detail, we welcome  this as a defining  step  forward  for consumers in the European Union.

According to Monique Goyens, Director General of BEUC, "For what seems like an eternity, it has been claimed that consumers are benefiting from the competition policy of the European Union. Until now, these benefits have often been purely  theoretical. This  initiative will allow  these  theories  to become reality, and finally allow victims of anti-competitive practices to be compensated. For the first time, a Group Action is foreseen in a Community instrument; we hope that this will just be the beginning of a wider reflection at European level, which would pave the way for the principle of collective redress for consumers to be extended."

The European Consumers' Organisation (BEUC) was created in 1962 by the consumer organisations of Belgium, Luxembourg, France, the Netherlands, Italy and Germany. After working together for a number of years, these organisations decided to create a European association, based in Brussels, right at the heart of Community policy. BEUC was a pioneer, one of the first lobbying organisations to set up base in the European capital in a bid to influence the decision-making process.