ROMANIA Law and Practice Contributed by: Manuela Guia, Otilia Vîlcu, Violeta Geru and Cristina Badea, GNP Guia Naghi & Partners
However, no reported Romanian case has so far involved a contribution claim being brought following a competition damages award. This is likely attribut - able to the small number of cartel damages actions concluded on the merits to date. Contribution claims should in principle be governed by general rules. As such, when apportioning con - tribution among co-infringers, factors such as each infringer’s relative responsibility for the harm caused, including its role in the cartel, its market share, turno - ver and duration of participation, would typically be relevant. This also aligns with criteria applied by other European courts. Romanian law provides for urgent interim relief, which allows a party to obtain a provisional measure without a full trial on the merits where the matter is urgent, the measure sought is provisional in nature and it does not prejudge the substantive dispute; equivalent meas - ures exist to preserve evidence pending the taking of proof. These general mechanisms are, in theory, available in a private antitrust context, for instance to preserve evidence or to prevent irreparable harm pending judg - ment, but no reported Romanian private antitrust case has so far involved a claimant seeking or obtaining injunctive relief of this kind, so no settled practice yet exists as to how such an application would be tested, granted or reversed on the merits. 10.2 Alternative Dispute Resolution Alternative dispute resolution is available and encour - aged in Romanian antitrust damages litigation. GEO 170/2020 expressly allows the court to suspend a pending damages action for up to two years where the parties are engaged in consensual dispute res - olution regarding the claim. While ADR is not man - dated, several follow-on claims arising from the first European Commission Trucks Cartel decision were resolved through out-of-court settlements once a final infringement decision had already established liability. Existing precedent on damages shows that settlement 10. Other Remedies 10.1 Injunctions
is most attractive once the legal and factual landscape for a claim has become clearer. Beyond the specific two-year stay mechanism under GEO 170/2020, Romania has a general mediation framework under Law No 192/2006, which allows par - ties to any civil dispute, including a private antitrust litigation, to refer their dispute to a certified mediator, whether before or after litigation has commenced. A settlement reached through mediation can be given the force of a court judgment. In the antitrust damages context specifically, the set - tlements reported to date, including those following the first European Commission Trucks Cartel decision, appear to have been negotiated directly between the parties rather than through formal mediation, sug - gesting that direct settlement negotiation, rather than mediation as such, remains the more common form of consensual dispute resolution once a final infringe - ment decision has effectively established liability. However, little public information is available on such settlement proceedings. Traditional third-party litigation funding, as seen in some other European jurisdictions, remains largely untested in Romania. Law No 414/2023 is currently the only Romanian framework that expressly address - es third-party funding, but only in the specific context of collective consumer redress actions brought by qualified entities and it does not extend to competi - tion law infringements. A related but similarly novel practice is assigning indi - vidual claimants’ litigation rights to a single entity to pursue a consolidated damages claim, which Roma - nian courts have not yet tested and would likely chal - lenge on the validity and scope of the assignment. 11.2 Costs Romanian civil procedure requires a claimant to pay a stamp duty calculated as a percentage of the value of its claim and cases to date show that this can be a very high cost (eg, a court stamp duty of around 11. Funding and Costs 11.1 Litigation Funding
151 A NTITRUST LI T IGATI O N 2026
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