Court of Justice EU , 16 April 2026 : Interpretation of “anchor defendant” under Article 8 Brussels I - civil and commercial matters

Interpretation of “anchor defendant” under Article 8 Brussels regulation in civil and commercial matters (Article 8 Brussels Regulation). 

For decisions to be regarded as irreconcilable, it is not sufficient that they lead to divergent outcomes, that divergence must also arise within the context of the same factual and legal situation

The rule laid down in Article 8(1) Brussels regulation cannot be interpreted as allowing an applicant to make a claim against a number of defendants for the sole purpose of removing one of them from the jurisdiction of the courts of the State in which that defendant is domiciled and, thus, of circumventing the rule of jurisdiction contained in that provision by artificially creating or maintaining the conditions for the application of that provision

It is for the referring court to assess whether the same legal and factual situation exists,[…] and to ensure that the claims brought against the sole co-defendant whose domicile justifies the jurisdiction of the court seised are not intended to artificially satisfy the conditions

Decisive situation of a parent company is established when

a parent company directly or indirectly holds all or almost all of the capital in a subsidiary that has committed an infringement of the competition rules, there is a rebuttable presumption that that parent company does in fact exercise a decisive influence over the conduct of its subsidiary

It is not the holding of all or virtually all of the subsidiary’s share capital that gives rise to the presumption of the effective exercise of a decisive influence, but rather the degree of control that the parent company exercises over its subsidiary as a result of that holding.

“So closely connected” under Article 8(1) Brussels regulation must be interpreted as meaning that,

• In Civil and commercial matters, on one hand an action brought against an anchor defendant who has not been identified as liable for an infringement of Article 101 TFEU and Article 53 of the EEA Agreement[….] and, on the other hand, actions brought against companies in respect of which there are serious indications that they belong to undertakings, within the meaning of EU competition law, to which that infringement has been attributed, may be ‘so closely connected’.
• · in order to assess whether the claims brought against several defendants are ‘so closely connected’, the predictability for the co-defendant of being sued in the court of the anchor defendant does not constitute an independent criterion, but must be taken into consideration, as a general principle, in the application of the special rule on jurisdiction.
• in order to assess whether the claims brought against several defendants are ‘so closely connected’, the prospects of success of the claim against the anchor defendant should not be taken into account. However, it may be taken into account as an indication that the claimant has not artificially created the conditions for the application of that provision. The fact that the damage alleged in a claim for damages for cartel infringement before a court of a Member State occurred outside the EEA does not, in itself, imply, in the context of verifying the international jurisdiction of that court, that the claim must be classified as manifestly unfounded.
• determining both the international jurisdiction and the territorial jurisdiction of the court of a Member State in whose jurisdiction the anchor defendant is domiciled.
• Article 8(1) does not preclude a court that was initially seised from declining jurisdiction in favour of another court in the same Member state, if it considers that it lacks territorial jurisdiction to hear the action against the anchor defendant, provided that the transfer is allowed under national procedural rules and does not undermine the effectiveness of the Regulation.

IPPT20260416 , CJEU, GCC Interconnection Authority v Prysmian Netherlands