PORTUGAL Law and Practice Contributed by: José Luís da Cruz Vilaça and Mariana Tavares, Antas da Cunha Ecija
1. Introduction 1.1 Current Framework for Private Antitrust Litigation The Portuguese competition law framework is estab - lished by the Competition Act (Law No 19/2012). The Act incorporates rules that are substantively identical to Articles 101 and 102 of the Treaty on the Function - ing of the European Union (TFEU), prohibiting anti- competitive agreements, concerted practices, and abuses of dominant market positions. Private enforcement of competition law is governed by the Private Damages Act (Law No 23/2018), which transposed the EU Damages Directive (2014/104/EU) into national law. This statute governs private antitrust litigation and is applicable to both EU and national competition law infringements. Under this legislation, any undertaking or association of undertakings found to have breached competition rules is required to fully compensate affected parties for harm caused by the infringement. This obligation is grounded in Article 483 of the Portuguese Civil Code, which lays out the general principles of tort liability. These include the need to demonstrate unlawful con - duct committed with fault (either intentionally or neg - ligently), actual damage suffered by the claimant, and a causal connection between the misconduct and the harm incurred. The substantive and procedural framework estab - lished by the Private Antitrust Act is further comple - mented by other legal sources, including Law No 19/2012 of 8 May (as amended by Law No 17/2022, which transposed Directive (EU) 2019/1 – the ECN+ Directive – into Portuguese law), as well as the Civil Code and the Code of Civil Procedure. 1.2 Recent Developments Private antitrust enforcement in Portugal has evolved into a more mature and dynamic field, characterised by a notable rise in the number and complexity of damages actions. This momentum continued to build in 2024, driven in large part by a surge in damages claim litigation arising from both national enforcement by the Portuguese Competition Authority (AdC) and
infringement decisions issued by the European Com - mission. One of the main drivers of this growth has been the AdC’s robust enforcement activity, particularly in the area of hub-and-spoke cartels. Since 2020, the AdC has issued ten infringement decisions involving alleged vertical price co-ordination between major suppliers and Portugal’s leading supermarket chains. In the AdC’s view, these cases uncovered long-term prac - tices whereby suppliers aligned retail prices through indirect contacts facilitated by shared distributors and retailers – effectively restricting intra-brand competi - tion and resulting in inflated prices for consumers. All ten decisions are currently under appeal before the Competition, Regulation and Supervision Court. Nevertheless, they have laid a substantial factual and evidentiary groundwork for subsequent claims for damages. The AdC’s tenth and final round of hub-and-spoke sanctions in the retail sector brought the total fines issued throughout the series to over EUR686 million. Separately, Portuguese courts have upheld several AdC decisions on appeal relating to vertical restraints and abuse of dominance, including the Lisbon Court of Appeal’s confirmation of Super Bock’s EUR24 mil - lion fine for resale price fixing in the HORECA chan - nel, the EDP/Sonae non-compete fine, and the EDP Produção fine for abuse of dominance. This pattern of appellate confirmation of AdC infringement findings reinforces the evidentiary basis for follow-on claims. In late 2024, the consumer association Ius Omnibus brought a series of standalone actions for damages before the Competition, Regulation and Supervision Court against several suppliers that the AdC found to have participated in infringement practices. Although these actions are formally classified as standalone claims, they are substantively grounded in the AdC’s published findings and underlying factual evidence. The defendants in these proceedings include: • Sociedade Central de Cervejas e Bebidas (SCC) • Primedrinks – Comercialização de Bebidas Alcoóli - cas e Produtos Alimentares • Beiersdorf Portuguesa
123 A NTITRUST LI T IGATI O N 2026
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