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legal consequences. It could be stated that the antitrust liability of one of the constituents
of a single economic entity is attributed to all legal persons belonging in the same entity.

The direction of the attribution at this point is now immaterial since it is an entire
corporate group that is deemed to be a perpetrator. It follows from the foregoing

consideration that the methodology of the CJEU could be applied to attribute the liability
of a parent company to its subsidiary. The statement of the ECJ in case Skanska, in
accordance with the foregoing consideration that a subsidiary could be held liable for

the infringement of its parent company, can immensely impose an EU-wide impact.
It is due to the fact that the methodology enables individuals to bring an action

for damages against an innocent subsidiary whose parent company participates in
an anti-competitive infringement, such as a cartel. The recent preliminary reference
from the Spanish Court verifies the current concern and therefore inquires the CJEU to

clarify the precise criteria of the single economic doctrine regarding the attribution of
liability.

It is not for the purpose of the article to absolutely preclude the attribution of
liability from one legal person to another in EU competition law. On the contrary,
attribution is required in order to prevent the corporate groups from circumventing

antitrust liability using the complex reconstruction. However, the current methodology
consists of overabundant defects which as a result create undesirable legal consequences

without rational justifications. Accordingly, regardless of the ECJ decision in case Sumal,
there is a need for the more comprehensive and clarified single economic doctrine in
order for the attribution of liability to be effective and reasonable. Several critiques

have pointed to the concept enshrined in corporate law such as to return to the dual
criteria applied in the cases prior to the Akzo case . Another possibility could be the
132
use of a compliance programme, which is considered to apply more harmoniously with
the relevant fundamental principle, i.e. principle of personal liability. 133

132 Andriani Kalintiri, Revisiting Parental Liability in EU Competition Law, supra (n.25), p.159
133 See, for example Bruce Wardhaugh, Punishing parents for the sins of their child, supra (n.46); Florence
Thépot, The Interaction Between Competition Law and Corporate Governance, supra (n.8), chapter 8 “Cartel
Enforcement: Corporate Compliance Programmes”; Karl Hofstetter and Melanie Ludescher, Fines against Parent
Companies, supra (n.18)

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