Standard arbitration agreements: a viable means for antitrust damages claims?

Abstract

Following the judgment of the Court of Justice and especially the Opinion of the Advocate General in the CDC Hydrogen Peroxide case, arbitration agreements on disputes concerning damages for infringements of the competition rules of the TFEU have been interpreted as being contrary to the principle of effectiveness of EU law by making the non-application of the competition rules more likely. Moreover, standard arbitration agreements, which are concluded ex ante (before the dispute arises) and delimit their objective scope in generic terms (referring, in one formulation or another, to any dispute arising out of or related to a specific contract), only cover disputes over contractual damages, but not those relating to damages in tort caused by a party’s participation in a cartel. Therefore, national judges should not decline jurisdiction over the standard arbitration agreements proposed by the main international arbitral institutions, making it impossible for arbitration to become a viable means of resolving disputes arising from cartel damages. However, although the principle of effectiveness limits the procedural autonomy of the Member States as regards the remedies for exercising the right to claim compensation for such damages, it does not prevent the holder from voluntarily waiving the right to exercise it before a court and submitting the dispute to arbitration. Moreover, in the absence of harmonization by EU law of the rules on commercial arbitration, any question relating to the existence, validity or scope of the arbitration agreement is governed by the law of each Member State. Therefore, a standard arbitration clause may also cover disputes relating to non-contractual liability incurred by a contracting party as a result of its participation in an unlawful cartel if this was the will of the parties when concluding the contract, as interpreted by national courts or arbitrators in accordance with the law applicable to the dispute.

Keywords

• EU competition law
• Cartel damages
• Standard arbitration agreements
• Effectiveness of EU law
• Pro-arbitration interpretation