From Public Enforcement to Private Enforcement: Is Information Getting Lost Along the Way?
On 17 August 2026, the Official Journal published notice of an action brought before the General Court by Creditell GmbH against the European Commission (T-397/26). The case concerns two apparently distinct matters: the Commission’s refusal to grant access to selected documents from the file of the Trucks cartel (AT.39824) and its failure, almost nine years after adopting the 2017 Scania decision, to publish a definitive non-confidential version of that decision.
Neither issue is new. Both access to competition authority files and the publication of Commission antitrust decisions have generated a substantial body of EU case law. Yet their combination in this case brings into focus a broader question that extends well beyond Regulation 1049/2001 or the publication of a single cartel decision: how is information generated through public enforcement supposed to circulate into private enforcement? More specifically, what happens when the information made publicly available by the Commission is insufficient to enable claimants and national courts to make effective use of the disclosure mechanisms established by the Damages Directive (2014/104/EU)?
Read the full piece here.