Parental Liability in Joint Venture Cases

Abstract

This paper analyses the recent Commission practice and General Court's case law on the attribution of liability in joint venture scenarios and comes to the conclusion that the decisive influence test is not consistently applied. Since the 'Avebe' case which concerned a joint venture that lacked independence from its parent companies the attribution of liability has been gradually extended to full-function joint ventures. Rather than focusing on autonomous behavior of the joint venture company on the market in line with the 'Akzo' test, the analysis of decisive influence by the Commission and the General Court has more recently been limited to structural elements such as shareholder veto rights.