On The Rules Of Antitrust Collective Litigations In The U.S. And The EU: Lessons For China

More than 100 years'antitrust practice has proved that the effective enforcement of antitrust laws plays an extremely important role for the developments of countries and the order of market economy. The fulfillments of the goals of antitrust laws require the coordination between public enforcement and private enforcement. As the enactment of the Antimonopoly Law of the People's Republic of China, civil litigations regard to antitrust disputes has taken place in the courts in China. Among them are antitrust collective litigations. Under certain circumstances, the total loss suffered from antitrust violations is tremendous since the number of victims is usually numerous. However, the victims are reluctant to file lawsuits individually after balancing the rewards they might get and the costs they might face. In these situations, the collective redress mechanism might stimulate and encourage the victims to get involved in the lawsuits to claim for their rights. At present, the collective redress mechanism is under development in China. To learn from the successful experience of the U.S. antitrust class actions and the inspirable proposals and experience of the EU is significant for the fully enforcement of the antimonopoly law of China. This Paper tries to give proposals for the improvement of the antitrust collective redress mechanism in China by analyzing the successful experience of the U.S. antitrust class actions and the related inspirable proposals and experience of the EU.This article comprises six parts as follows:The forewords introduce the incentives and objectives of this article.Chapter one introduces the general picture of antitrust private enforcement to lay the ground work.Chapter Two introduces the U.S. antitrust class actions by defining the U.S. class actions and analyzing the problems and critics regarding to the U.S. class actions in the first part of it, and introducing the concepts and criticism of the U.S. antitrust class actions and the rise and declines of them in the second part of it.Chapter Three introduces the inspirable proposals of the EU and the experience of the EU member states. The first part of this chapter gives a general picture of the antitrust collective redress mechanisms in both EU as a whole and the member states. The second part of this chapter focuses on the proposals related to the antitrust collective redress mechanisms in the 2005 Green Paper and the 2008 White Paper. The third part of this chapter discusses the possible improvement for the suggestions in the White Paper concerning antitrust collective litigations.Chapter Four analyzes the present situation of collective redress mechanism in China, and gives proposals for the improvement of the antitrust collective redress mechanism in China by learning from the successful experience of the U.S. antitrust class actions and the related inspirable proposals and experience of the EU.The conclusion summarizes the key viewpoints in this article and puts forward pertinence conclusions to the key questions.