Umbrella effect: The French Administrative Supreme Court specifies the legal regime of the quasi-delictual liability action available to public entities against the perpetrators of anti-competitive practices carried out in connection with the awarding of public contracts (Mersen)

*This article is an automatic translation of the original article, provided here for your convenience. Read the original article. As economists point out, "the fight against horizontal cartels is at the heart of any competition policy. The objective is to prevent price levels and market allocation from being the result of concerted decisions and not of impersonal market forces" (R. Guesnerie and D. Encaoua, Politiques de la concurrence, Rapport du conseil d'analyse économique, 2006, p. 67). From this point of view, the Competition Authority and the Paris Court of Appeal consider that "agreements between bidders in public procurement tenders are, by their very nature, particularly serious since only compliance with competition rules guarantees the sincerity of the tender and the