Piercing the Corporate Veil in EU Competition Law: The Parent Subsidiary Relationship and Antitrust Liability

The aim of the present work is to analyse the case law of the Court of Justice and the General Court in order to understand how EU competition law influences the parent–subsidiary relationship as well as other legal relationships among entities enjoying separate legal personality under national applicable laws. To this end, the author will first deal with the definition of undertaking in the framework of articles 101 and 102 TFEU. The focus will then turn to the principle of personal responsibility, as affirmed in EU case law, to show how that case law often pierces the corporate veil or in otherwise makes national legal personality doctrines inapplicable. Moreover, a possible shift towards a regime of strict criminal liability will be observed. As will be seen, this move, combined with the (discretionary) use of an economic unit doctrine applied to legal personality, autonomously developed by EU Courts under Article 101 TFEU, may give rise to non-negligible due process of law issues. Lastly, the author will consider if and to what extent the ECJ/GC approach to the parent–subsidiary relationship in the field of antitrust liability can be resorted to in the framework of private enforcement.