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infringement committed by its parent company, without the need to establish further
requirements.

Even though the aforementioned reasoning enables to CJEU to held a subsidiary

liable as a part of the infringing undertaking, such methodology would come with
additional legal consequences. In order to be in accordance with the principle of personal
responsibility governing the civil liability, it can be inferred that a subsidiary can be
held liable since its fault is derived from the fact that it belongs to the same economic

entity as a perpetrator of EU competition law. This potential statement would explicitly
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render the single economic entity doctrine into group liability. The methodology in this

circumstance aligns with the previous analysis that the decisive influence does not play
a significant role when attributing the liability between legal persons but only served
as a tool to establish a precise economic entity. In addition, the scope of the liability
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could be extended to other constituents in a single economic entity, such as employees
and subcontractors
123
However, such argumentation gives rise to the contentious question concerning
the contradiction with the principle of personal liability. If the principle of parental
liability, even with the supplementation of the consideration of decisive influence,

is considered to be in contrast with the principle of personal liability, the liability of
innocent subsidiaries as constituents of the infringing undertaking, without the
requirement of the exercise of decisive influence, cannot be considered, a fortiori,

to be in accordance with the principle of personal liability.
Furthermore, the practical effect of the current reasoning can be contributed to

the increase in the amount of action for damages. It is due to the fact that nowadays
there are several complex and expansive relationship between the companies in the
corporate group. Disregarding other requirement such as decisive influence in order to

attribute liability between legal persons constituting one economic entity, such reasoning

121 See, by analogy, Stefan Thomas, ‘Guilty of a Fault that one has not Committed, supra (n.45), p.22
122 Christian Kersting, , Liability of Sister Companies and Subsidiaries in European Competition Law,
supra (n.58), p.16-19
123 Okeoghene Odudu and David Bailey, The single economic entity doctrine in EU competition law,
supra (n.56), p.1746

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