Decisioni con impegni e antitrust private enforcement : verso una convergenza possibile

Commitment decisions constitute an increasingly central tool in the arsenal of antitrust public enforcement, by enabling the best achievement of a result of optimal market functioning. On the other hand, being based on the lack of any finding of infringement, along with the imprimatur of bindingness to commitments that the companies involved propose to undertake, those decisions imply a deviation from the trajectory of complementarity between public and private instruments of competition law enforcement. Once however, that the recourse to commitment decisions is being gradually made independent from the mandatory threshold of the minimum gravity of the alleged infringements, the acceptability of this state of affairs is gradually waning. It is therefore from this point of view that a number of important interventions by the Court of Justice should be read, aimed at giving prominence, including in the courts, to commitment decisions and the preliminary findings preceding them.