Public Compensation for Private Harm: Fair Funds for Consumer Competition Law Redress

This paper discusses the use of the concept of Fair Funds for consumer competition law enforcement from an EU perspective. With such Fair Funds, the US Securities and Exchange Commission distributes collected fines and disgorged profits to compensate victims of securities law violations. The paper explains the use of Fair Funds in US law, highlights similarities, and adapts the concept for use in European competition law enforcement. It places an emphasis on the usefulness of such a concept against the role of consumers, but the conclusions can equally be drawn for small and medium enterprises ' private enforcement or private enforcement of competition law in general. It shows the advantages and disadvantages of including a system of Fair Funds. The paper argues that Fair Funds can serve as an alternative form of compensation, particularly for large groups of individual victims harmed in a small amount, such as consumers, with that overcome the lack of a harmonized collective redress system on EU level, and improve the coordination between public and private enforcement.