On 7 April 2022, Advocate General Szpunar gave an opinion in one of the trucks cases, this time of Spanish company AD and others versus Paccar inc., DAF Trucks N.V. and DAF Trucks Deutschland GmbH.[1] It was mainly about the extent to which there was an obligation to provide information set out in Article 5 of the Antitrust Damages Directive[2]. This obligation was included to give aggrieved parties of the cartel the opportunity to request information that is within the domain of the cartelists and that is relevant to their claim for damages. The question was whether this only pertained to existing information, or whether the defendants can also be required to produce information ex novo. Advocate General Szpunar believed this to be the case. He determined that the words “relevant evidence” of Article 5 of the Antitrust Damages Directive also pertain to documents that the defendant “must create ex novo, by compiling or classifying information, knowledge or data held by it”.

[1] Opinion of Advocate General Szpunar, 7 April 2022, case C-163/21 (AD and others/Paccar and others).

[2] Directive 2014/104/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 November 2014 on certain rules governing actions for damages under national law for infringements of the competition law provisions of the Member States and of the European Union.