Private Enforcement in Bid-Rigging Cases in the European Union

"It is widely acknowledged that private enforcement under EU and national competition laws has been extremely limited to date. This means that competition law is mostly enforced by competition agencies, subject to review by the court, while it is much less common that national courts in Europe directly enforce the law at the initiative of private parties. As a result, according to a study of the European Commission, the amount of compensation that the victims of competition law are forgoing is in the range of several billion euros a year."