These are the Minutes of a Closed Workshop organised on 21 May 2015 in Brussels, Belgium. The Closed Workshop was entirely dedicated to the PDD.

The Closed Workshop was attended by a group of competition law specialists covering the majority of the Member States. A complete list of the attendees is included in Annex 2 to the Minutes.

The exchange of views during the Closed Workshop was structured as follows. For each Chapter of the PDD a brief introduction was provided. This was then followed by an in-depth discussion of selected issues of interpretation gathered from the participating practitioners.

The Minutes adhere to the same structure so that each section of the Minutes corresponds to a chapter of the PDD. Every section commences with a description of the general context within which the specific questions addressed during the Closed Workshop must be placed and understood. The outcome of the actual discussion of the specific questions is then provided in a Q&A format, very much resembling the approach used in the Closed Workshop.

Given the format of the Closed Workshop, inevitably only selected interpretation issues came up and are addressed in these Minutes. The Minutes therefore do not aim to provide a complete commentary or interpretation guide on the PDD. Furthermore, the Minutes reflect the outcome of a debate and are therefore not intended as legal advice, nor as a reflection of the position of the individual law firms involved or of the Commission on the matters addressed.

By the same token, given the depth of the discussions that took place during the Closed Workshop we are convinced that the Minutes provide useful and meaningful guidance. The joint effort during the Closed Workshop has resulted in a level of understanding of certain aspects of the PDD that to our knowledge have so far not been published.

We are grateful to Filip Tuytschaever for reviewing an earlier version of these Minutes.

We like to thank Eddy De Smijter (DG Competition, Head of Unit, ECN and Private Enforcement), Martin Seegers (Cartel Damage Claims), Ben Bornemann (Cartel Damage Claims) and Anneli Howard (Monckton Chambers) for having shared their personal experience with the issue of private damages actions during the Closed Workshop.