ROMANIA Law and Practice Contributed by: Manuela Guia, Otilia Vîlcu, Violeta Geru and Cristina Badea, GNP Guia Naghi & Partners
By way of comparison, several other European juris - dictions have experimented with bundling mecha - nisms or foundation-based vehicles that function, in substance, as collective vehicles for damages claims, but Romania has not adopted any equivalent mecha - nism, so every claimant, whether proceeding individu - ally or as part of a co-participation cluster, must be individually identified and must individually establish its own harm and causal link. 4.3 Direct/Indirect Purchasers Both direct and indirect purchasers have standing to claim damages under Romanian law. Indirect pur - chasers benefit from a rebuttable presumption that an overcharge suffered by the direct purchaser was passed on to them, provided they demonstrate the existence of an infringement, an overcharge affecting the direct purchaser and their own acquisition of the goods or services affected by the infringement. In practice, the majority of Romanian claims to date have been brought by direct purchasers, particularly in the Trucks Cartel litigation, where claims by indi - rect purchasers are also common given that many vehicles were acquired through independent dealers or leasing arrangements; direct purchaser claims are more typical where the claimant has a direct contrac - tual relationship with the infringer, as seen in cases against railway and electricity distribution operators. Romanian courts do not appear to have coordinated with each other or considered judgments obtained by claimants at other levels of the same supply chain, to guard against double recovery for the same infringe - ment. Across Europe, approximately 87% of cartel dam - ages actions were brought by direct purchasers and only around 7% by indirect purchasers, a gap the researchers attributed to the practical difficulty indi - rect purchasers face in proving the extent to which an overcharge was passed on to them. Romanian practice broadly mirrors this pattern, with the leading cases brought by private companies and only a hand - ful of claims against infrastructure operators, brought by direct purchasers with a regulated public-sector counterparty.
The Damages Directive framework requires national courts to take due account of related actions and judgments concerning the same infringement at other levels of the supply chain in order to avoid under- or over-compensation and while this obligation applies as a matter of EU law in Romania, no reported Roma - nian judgment has yet had to apply it, given the small number of cases in which both direct and indirect pur - chaser claims have proceeded in parallel to judgment. 4.4 Class Certification Romania has no formal class certification procedure, since the jurisdiction does not operate a class action mechanism for antitrust private enforcement. Multiple claimants may still proceed together as co-claimants under ordinary civil procedure rules and past banking litigation has shown that several hundred claimants can be joined in a single case through common rep - resentatives, but even in such cases the existence of harm, causation and quantum must be established individually for each claimant rather than on a class- wide basis. Moreover, as part of its assessment of the claim’s legal requirements, the court examines whether the claim - ant has capacity and standing and whether the statu - tory requirements for bringing the action are satisfied. The defendant may raise these issues in the statement of defence and the court typically addresses them at the preliminary stage of the proceedings, before examining the merits. 5. Choice of Jurisdiction 5.1 Rules on Jurisdiction and Applicable Law Follow-on and stand-alone claims for private com - petition damages brought under GEO 170/2020 fall within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Bucharest Tri - bunal, irrespective of where the parties are domiciled. Where a claim is brought against a foreign defendant, Romanian courts have accepted jurisdiction on the basis of Article 7 (2) of EU Regulation No 1215/2012, which allows a claimant to sue in tort in the courts of the place where the harmful event occurred and have rejected challenges to jurisdiction raised by non- Romanian defendants on this basis.
147 A NTITRUST LI T IGATI O N 2026
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