ROMANIA Law and Practice Contributed by: Manuela Guia, Otilia Vîlcu, Violeta Geru and Cristina Badea, GNP Guia Naghi & Partners
Allocation Within Courts In practice, competition damages claims brought before the Bucharest Tribunal have generally been allocated to specialised civil divisions with experi - ence in commercial disputes. This concentration of expertise within a single first-instance court is intended to promote consistency in the application of GEO 170/2020’s presumptions and disclosure rules, although the relatively small number of cases decided on the merits to date means that a fully settled body of first-instance practice has not yet emerged. Claims that fall outside the specific scope of GEO 170/2020, such as general tort claims relating to com - petition-adjacent conduct or claims framed exclusive - ly under consumer protection legislation, are allocated according to the ordinary rules of civil jurisdiction and may accordingly be heard by any competent court in Romania, including courts outside Bucharest where the defendant or the harm is located elsewhere. 2.3 Impact of Competition Authorities A final decision of the Competition Council constitutes irrefutable proof before the civil courts of the existence and nature of the infringement, as well as of its mate - rial, personal, temporal and territorial scope, so that a claimant relying on a final decision does not need to re-litigate liability. Before a decision becomes final, it nonetheless ben - efits, as an administrative act, from presumptions of legality, truthfulness and authenticity, although these presumptions may be inapplicable if the decision is suspended pending an annulment challenge. In such cases, the civil court should itself examine whether an infringement occurred. The Competition Council does not sit in the civil pro - ceedings, but courts may request its assistance in quantifying damages where the Competition Council considers this appropriate. Consistent with the general Damages Directive frame - work, decisions of competition authorities of other EU member states may be relied upon as evidence of an infringement, without carrying the same irrefutable evidentiary status as a final Romanian decision.
Foreign NCA decisions have not yet featured promi - nently in reported Romanian case law, but consistent with the Damages Directive framework, a final deci - sion of a competition authority in another EU member state should, at a minimum, constitute prima facie evi - dence that an infringement occurred, which a Romani - an court is entitled to weigh alongside other evidence even though it would not carry the same irrefutable status as a final Romanian Competition Council. When the underlying decision comes from the Euro - pean Commission, Romanian courts have treated it in the same way as domestic decisions for these pur - poses, as both are governed by the EU law frame - work that gives them binding effect on national courts. Romanian Courts have also relied on Article 16 of Regulation 1/2003, which prohibits national courts from ruling contrary to a decision adopted by the European Commission. Therefore, even when claims fell outside of the scope of the national rules trans - posing the Damages Directive, Romanian courts have been seen to respect the effects of a European Com - mission decision. 2.4 Proof In principle, in private damages litigation, the claim - ant bears the general burden of proof and must prove that the conditions of civil liability are met and that the damages claimed meet the necessary standard of remedy, including reasonableness and causal link. If the claim is covered by the Damages Directive trans - position, several statutory presumptions ease the bur - den of proof on the part of a claimant in a follow-on claim. First, GEO 170/2020 provides for the statutory pre - sumption that cartels cause harm, in the amount of a 20% overcharge in prices for the goods and/or ser - vices covered by the cartel. The prior GEO 39/2017 (ie, the initial transposition) only provided for a pre - sumption of harm. GEO 170/2020 also provides that abuse of dominance infringements are presumed to cause harm. These presumptions are relative. Even where these presumptions apply, the claimant must still establish a causal link between the infringe - ment and its own specific loss and in practice both
144 A NTITRUST LI T IGATI O N 2026
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