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Legal briefing

Reference for a preliminary ruling from the Hungarian Supreme Court to the CJEU concerning the application of the theory of economic unity to the parent company and subsidiaries of the injured party in a competition damage claim

29/08/2022

This Legal Briefing discusses the question referred by the Hungarian Supreme Court to the CJEU for a preliminary ruling concerning the application of the theory of economic unity.

On 28 June 2022, the Supreme Court of Hungary (Kúria) referred a question to the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) for a preliminary ruling in Case C-425/22.

The original proceedings were brought before the General Court of Budapest (Fővárosi Törvényszék, omissis) by the claimant MOL Magyar Olaj- és Gázipari Nyrt (“Mol” or “the applicant”), a joint stock company with its registered office in Hungary, listed on the Budapest Stock Exchange and ultimately managing the companies belonging to the MOL Group, against the defendant Mercedes-Benz Group AG, (“Mercedes” or “the defendant”) claiming compensation for the alleged damages resulting from an infringement of Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (“TFEU”) and Article 53 of the Agreement on the European Economic Area, sanctioned in the European Commission’s decision of 19 July 2016, (Case AT.39824 ― Trucks1).

The entire content of the Legal Briefing can be found in the PDF.