In its judgment of 22 June 2022 in Case C-267/20 – Volvo and DAF Trucks, the Court of Justice (the Court) clarified the temporal application of Directive 2014/104/EU (the Directive) in cartel cases.
This action for damages follows the Commission’s decision of 19 July 2016 (AT.39824) to fine several truck manufacturers for participating in an EEA-wide cartel between 1997 and 2011. One of the truck purchasers, a victim of the cartel, obtained compensation for his damages before the Spanish courts, arguing that the five-year limitation period provided for in Spanish law, transposing the relevant provisions of the Directive, was in force at the time that the action was brought and therefore applied to this case. However, Volvo and DAF Trucks argued that the Directive did not apply to the case, as it was not in force at the time of the infringement.
Through three preliminary questions, the Court sought to clarify the temporal application of the provisions of the Directive relating to the limitation period for actions for damages (Article 10) and the assessment of the damage caused by an infringement of competition law (Article 17).
In a preliminary note, the Court points out that the Directive prohibits (i) the retroactive application of any national legislation transposing the substantive provisions laid down therein and (ii) the application of any national legislation transposing the non-substantive provisions of the Directive to actions for damages brought before 26 December 2014. In this regard, the Court makes clear that: “the question as to which provisions of that directive are substantive and which are not must, in the absence of a reference to national law in Article 22 of Directive 2014/104, be assessed in the light of EU law and not in the light of the applicable national law” (§ 39).
• The five-year limitation period is applicable when claims for damages are not yet time-barred at the time of the transposition of the Directive
On the question of the statute of limitations, the Court first notes that it is a matter of substantive law, which excludes the retroactive application of national provisions transposing Article 10 of the Directive. In this regard, the Court notes that the Directive was transposed into Spanish law five months after the time limit for its transposition had expired. Therefore, in order to determine the temporal applicability of Article 10, the Court examines whether, on the date when the time limit for the transposition of the Directive expired, namely 27 December 2016, the limitation period applicable to the situation at issue in the main proceedings (one year in Spanish law) had elapsed. In this regard, the Court states that the starting point of the limitation period (i.e. the moment when the circumstances giving rise to liability became known to the injured party) was to be set, in casu, on the date of the publication of the summary of the Commission’s decision in the Official Journal (6 April 2017), which alone provided sufficient details about the infringement (identity of the perpetrators, duration and products concerned). Insofar as the one-year period had, in this case, not elapsed before 27 December 2016, the Court held that the action falls within the temporal scope of Article 10 of the Directive.
• The national courts’ power to quantify damages applies to legal actions brought after the entry into force of the provisions transposing the Directive into national law
With regard to the temporal applicability of Article 17(1) of the Directive, the Court finds that that provision pursues the objective of relaxing the standard of proof required for the purpose of quantifying the exact amount of damage suffered as a result of an infringement of competition law, and thus constitutes a procedural provision which is intended to be applied on the date on which it enters into force in national law. It is therefore applicable to actions brought after the entry into force of the provisions transposing it into national law, as in this case.
• The rebuttable presumption of damage applies to legal actions related to infringements of competition law which have not yet ceased at the time of entry into force of the provisions transposing the Directive into national law
Conversely, Article 17(2) of the Directive, which establishes a rebuttable presumption of damage caused by a cartel, must be interpreted as constituting a substantive rule. Therefore, this provision cannot be applied to an action for damages which, although brought after the entry into force of the provisions transposing the Directive into Spanish law, pertains to an infringement of competition law that ceased before the time limit for transposing the Directive had expired (26 December 2016), as in this case.
Please contact Pierre de Bandt or Jeroen Dewispelaere for further information about this case or for general legal advice relating to Belgian and EU competition law.