Part II The Member State Reports on Transposition of the Directive, 15 Portugal

This chapter analyzes the transposition of the Antitrust Damages Directive in Portugal. It first provides a general overview of the transposition procedure, focusing on the unified Bill that was adopted by the Plenary of the Parliament on 20 April 2018 and configured as the Transposition Act. It then describes the scope of private enforcement of competition law in Portugal before considering specific issues that arose from the transposition of the Directive, such as those relating to rights to pre-trial discovery, partial centralization of private enforcement at the specialized Court, access to evidence, time-barring deadlines, protecting failed settlement talks, the binding force of public enforcement decisions, concepts of undertaking and parent company liability, the presumed proportion of responsibility for joint liability, the quantification of damages, the Portuguese opt-out regime (actio popularis), and the effect on trade between Member States.