Private Enforcement Act Adopted by the Polish Parliament

On 21 April 2017, the lower house of the Polish Parliament ("Sejm") adopted the Act on Private Enforcement of Competition Law (the "Act"), which transposes Directive 2014/104/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 November 2014 (the so-called "Damages Directive") into Polish law. Less than four weeks later the Act was approved by the upper house of the Parliament ("Senat") and should be signed by the President by 9 June 2017. We discussed the highlights of the draft Act in a Legal Insights article dated 28 March 2017. The purpose of the present article is to provide more details about the adopted Act.

Although it was possible under general tort law rules to file a civil lawsuit for damages caused by an infringement of competition law, very few potential complainants decided to sue cartelists in Poland. This was mainly due to the difficulty in proving the extent of the damage and the causal link between it and the breach of competition law, which is