ROMANIA Law and Practice Contributed by: Manuela Guia, Otilia Vîlcu, Violeta Geru and Cristina Badea, GNP Guia Naghi & Partners
7. Witness and Expert Opinions 7.1 Witness Procedure
on third-party and media access to court files, since privileged material is excluded from disclosure to the opposing party in the first place, whereas the restric - tions on public and media access primarily concern material that has already been placed on the court file and instead limit who outside the proceedings may view it. 6.3 Leniency and Settlement Agreements Leniency statements and settlement submissions made to the Competition Council enjoy absolute pro - tection from disclosure in Romanian private damages proceedings. A court may review such a document only to confirm its nature as a leniency statement or settlement submission, without the parties gaining access to its content. Settlement submissions that have since been withdrawn or information prepared specifically for the Competition Council’s proceed - ings may be disclosed, but only after the Coun - cil has adopted its decision and Romanian courts have applied this protection in practice by declining requests for disclosure of leniency-file material even while granting disclosure of other parts of an inves - tigation file. This absolute protection is consistent with the Dam - ages Directive’s own treatment of leniency statements and settlement submissions, which are shielded from disclosure indefinitely in order to preserve the effec - tiveness of leniency programmes as a public enforce - ment tool. Romanian courts have applied this rule even where a party argues that the leniency material would be highly probative of the extent of an infringement or of an individual defendant’s role within it. By contrast, other categories of evidence held on the Competition Council’s file, such as internal Council correspond - ence, information voluntarily submitted by third par - ties or evidence gathered during an inspection, remain disclosable subject to the ordinary relevance, neces - sity and proportionality requirements and subject to the general subsidiarity principle that such material may only be sought from the Council once it cannot reasonably be obtained from the parties themselves.
Witnesses in Romanian civil proceedings, including private antitrust litigation, give oral evidence at a court hearing after being summoned and are cross-exam - ined by the parties’ counsel. Counsels and oppos - ing parties do not ask questions directly; they do so through the judge. Romanian procedural law restricts testimony from persons with a specific connection to a party to the case and in one proceeding this restric - tion was invoked. Witness evidence plays a comparatively modest role in Romanian competition damages litigation relative to documentary and expert evidence, since the central factual disputes in most cases, namely the existence and extent of an overcharge, are considered more reli - ably resolved through pricing data and econometric analysis than through oral testimony. 7.2 Expert Witness Role and Procedure Expert evidence plays a central role in Romanian pri - vate damages litigation, given the complexity of quan - tifying overcharges and other forms of harm. Rather than requiring the parties to converge on a single methodology, Romanian courts typically appoint an independent expert or a panel of experts, most often specialising in econometrics, financial accounting or business valuation, to provide their opinion on quan - tification of damages, while also permitting each party to have a counsel-appointed expert to challenge or support the court-appointed expert’s findings; where both parties request expert evidence, the associated costs may be split between them. The choice of expert can itself become contentious. In one Romanian case, the defendant proposed appointing an international firm rather than Romanian academic specialists, arguing that domestic experts lacked the necessary specialisation. At the same time, the claimant strongly opposed this, arguing there was no principled basis to discriminate against Romanian specialists and raising concerns about the independ - ence of an international firm that might have or seek, other commercial relationships with a large multina - tional group; the court ultimately favoured a multi - disciplinary panel combining econometric, financial-
149 A NTITRUST LI T IGATI O N 2026
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