Una struttura a due pilastri per l'antitrust enforcement europeo. Il tentativo di rilancio delle azioni risarcitorie oltre il level playing field?

The present PhD thesis corcerns the perspectives of antitrust damages compensation in the light of EU Directive 2014/104. The work is focused on the likely developments of national and european private antitrust enforcement after the implementation of the Directive, considering how this will impact the level of private enforcement application. After a preliminary analysis of the national and european framework of private enforcement, the work reaches the conclusion that, currently, private enforcement in under-developped, mainly due to a general lack of “antitrust awareness”. That considered, the work tries to understand whether the implementation fo the Directive is likely to boost to the use of private enforcement instruments. To this end, the research focuses on the main instruments introduced or regulated by the Directive, with particular regard to the fields where the game between public and private enforcement is played (such as the topic concerning the binding effect of fining decisions in antitrust damages lawsuits), in order to catch the possible changes that should take to build a “two-pillars” system for the enforcement of antitrust rules. After an in-depth analysis, the work ends up to the conclusion that the implementation is not likely to sensitively boost the application of private antitrust enforcement instruments, as the Directive does not actually impact the main problem, i.e. the lack of antitrust awareness at individuals and undertakings level, therefore having a mere value of creating a level playing field for the application of the rules.