Private enforcement: an overview of the leading cases and opinions

It is a pleasure to write the Foreword to this special issue of e-Competitions, the focus of which is EU Private Enforcement. The private enforcement of antitrust law has a long tradition in the US, as reflected in the interesting and diverse contributions to this issue, which traverse a range of important subjects. Private enforcement in Europe may have taken off later than in the US, but is also flourishing. In particular, 2017 saw the implementation across much of the European Union of the “Damages Directive”, [1] which aims to standardize both substantive and procedural provisions relating to competition law damages claims, making claims easier to bring and – in some respects – harder for defendants to avoid. The implementation of the Damages Directive over the course of the past