The Private Enforcement of Competition Law

Operating alongside public enforcement, private enforcement deters anticompetitive conduct and compensates the victims of competition law breaches, empowering them to vindicate their rights against companies. Approaches to private competition enforcement differ vastly across jurisdictions, further complicated by a diversity of tort and procedural laws. Given that many anticompetitive practices are transnational in nature, understanding how private competition claims are dealt with in different jurisdictions is essential.

Pedro Caro de Sousa’s monograph offers the first comprehensive and truly international overview of private competition enforcement. Across two sections, Caro de Sousa breaks down the main constituent elements of private enforcement and compares the ways in which each element is implemented across the main jurisdictions, particularly in the US and the EU. The book’s first section supplies a general overview of the topic, including a discussion of the relationship between public and private enforcement. The second section looks in more detail at the key elements of a private enforcement system, such as the judicial mechanisms for obtaining private redress for competition harm; practical solutions for ensuring effective enforcement; and the main economic methods that may be used to calculate damages arising from an infringement of competition law. Providing new insight into a topic of growing importance, Caro de Sousa’s book is designed to aid practitioners, policymakers, and researchers in dealing with competition matters.

Pedro Caro de Sousa, Agent, Legal Service, European Commission

Pedro Caro de Sousa joined the European Commission’s Legal Service (Competition Team) in 2022, having previously served as a competition expert for the OECD between 2015 and 2021. Before joining the OECD, he worked for Linklaters LLP between 2005 and 2014. He has a DPhil from the University of Oxford and was a lecturer in Law at the University of Reading, as well as a tutorial fellow at King’s College London and the University of Oxford. He was also a Visiting Scholar at the European University Institute and an Associate Research Fellow at New York University’s School of Law. Pedro is a qualified lawyer in Portugal and a barrister of England and Wales.