domingo, 13 de febrero de 2011

¿Por qué cosas litigan los alemanes en Derecho de la Competencia?

Un reciente trabajo recopila todas las sentencias dictadas en Alemania entre 2005 y 2007 en las que se aplicaron las normas europeas y alemanas de Derecho de la Competencia. Se trata de Peyer, Sebastian, Myths and Untold Stories - Private Antitrust Enforcement in Germany (July 1, 2010). El trabajo merece ser leído entero, pero a mí me interesa destacar que, como habíamos sugerido en nuestro trabajo publicado en InDret, el “private enforcement” del Derecho de la Competencia no está subdesarrollado. Hay muchos pleitos en los que se aplican las normas sobre competencia. 
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Obsérvese que apenas hay casos de fijación horizontal de precios u otros acuerdos horizontales. Los casos son, en su mayoría, casos típicos de competencia desleal. En Alemania, el abuso de una situación de dependencia económica se encuentra en la Ley de Defensa de la Competencia. En España, como es sabido, en la Ley de Competencia Desleal.
Lo que no hay es muchos pleitos de daños por cártel. Pero la razón se encuentra en que esta es una litigación incipiente porque lo son también las decisiones de las autoridades de competencia que declaran y sancionan la existencia de un cártel. Peyer añade una segunda posible explicación que parece plausible. En las follow-on claims podemos esperar que haya más settlement, esto es, transacciones entre las partes de manera que no se llegue a sentencia
Since there was a number of cartel cases in both the EU and Germ-any during the observation period and given that these cases on the whole are easier to litigate because culpability has been established, we would expect a high level of settlements in cases where the defendant‟s position was weak, leaving the cases where the plaintiff misjudged the strength of the defendant‟s case to go to court. In other words, cases where the defendant knows that he is likely to lose are settled before or during trial and, thus” no llegan a sentencia

2 comentarios:

Sebastian Peyer dijo...

Thank you very much for the warm reception of my work in this blog. My Spanish is limited, so I apologise if I did not understand your discussion of my results correctly. Characterising the majority of the cases in my sample as proceedings under unfair competition law (casos de competencia desleal) may not be correct though. While screening the case law, I deliberately omitted unfair competition trials from my dataset. It is true that, to some extent, ‘real’ competition and unfair competition disputes can overlap. However, economic dependency is a stricter approach to the control of market power which falls within the remit of competition law. Applying tighter criteria to the regulation of market power is allowed under Article 3 of the Modernisation Regulation although the Spanish Ley de Defensa de la Competencia does not make use of this exemption. Using ‘economic dependency’ as opposed to dominance does not change the nature of the cases from ‘real’ competition to unfair competition disputes. A sequel to my first study also seems to indicate that most cases are actually brought under ‘real’ dominance allegations.

JESÚS ALFARO AGUILA-REAL dijo...

Thanks. The point in my post was that competition law has a broader application in civil proceedings than usually said by the European Commission and that the only field where we do not see many cases is in cartel damages realm. Abuse of dominance position cases are frequent (including or not economic dependence cases)
Again, thank you for your comment!

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