Antitrust Collective Redress - What are the Benefits?

In antitrust proceedings a collective redress mechanism can improve the efficiency of the litigation process by consolidating potentially large number of different actions into one action. Since the harm caused by antitrust infringement is often spread across a large number of victims, each single having a low-value damage, collective action may improve the chance to get effective compensation for consumers and small/medium businesses. However, despite the laudable goals of compensation of victims and that of corrective justice, expanding rights of actions via a collective redress regime raise the issues of social desirable amount of civil litigation. To be effective, a collective redress mechanism should contain effective safeguards against the exploitation of the rules by private parties for private interests. This paper conveys an appraisal of the envisaged antitrust collective redress in the European Union. Considering the lack of safeguards against abusive litigations and the resulting detrimental effect on competition, this paper questions what benefit/s such a system would deliver.