In Wenzel Logistics v Mercedes-Benz¹Judgment of 30 April 2026 in Case C‑191/25, Wenzel Logistics GmbH v. Mercedes-Benz Group AG, ECLI:EU:C:2026:360, the European Court of Justice (CJEU) confirmed that Austrian civil-law rules which postpone the accrual of interest until the debtor has been put on notice cannot be applied where they prevent full compensation for harm caused by an infringement of EU competition law. Interest must accrue from the time the harm occurred. This applies regardless of whether the harm occurred before or after the Antitrust Damages Directive entered into force. In cartel cases, interest will usually start accruing on each date on which the injured party paid an overcharge.

The Wenzel Logistics case arose from an antitrust damages action before the Austrian courts due to the European-wide trucks cartel. Wenzel Logistics, a transport company established in Austria that had bought trucks from distributors of several participants in that cartel, claimed damages for inflated truck prices and also sought statutory interest from the date the harm occurred.

The lower courts awarded interest only from notification of the action (here 21 January 2021), relying on general Austrian civil-law rules under which interest accrues only once the claim has been asserted in quantified terms by formal notice or in court. They held that the special provisions under national competition law which would have granted interest from the occurrence of the harm did not apply to the case at hand ratione temporis. Austria’s Supreme Court (Oberster Gerichtshof, OGH) referred the matter to the CJEU.

The CJEU held that the Austrian lower courts’ interpretation would undermine the effectiveness of EU competition law, namely the ban of cartels under Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). Interest must run from the date the harm occurred. This will usually be the date the injured party paid the inflated cartel price.

Under EU competition law (Articles 101, 102 TFEU), anyone who has suffered harm caused by an infringement of its rules can claim compensation for actual loss, for gain of which that person has been deprived, plus interest. As recognized by EU Directive 2014/104 on antitrust damages, the payment of interest is an essential component of such compensation to make good the damage sustained by taking into account the effluxion of time and should be due from the time when the harm occurred until the time when compensation is paid. It is incumbent on the Member States to lay down the rules to be applied for that purpose.

In practice, the dies a quo is of huge economic importance. As an example (modelled on the case at hand): Assume that a transport company such as Wenzel Logistics, paid for a truck on 21 January 2001 and that the paid price included a cartel-induced overcharge of EUR 5,000. On 21 January 2026, the accrued interest (with the simple interest rate of a fixed four percent in place in Austria) would amount to either

1. a) EUR 5,000 = 25*0.04*5,000, if interest runs from the date of the harm; or
2. b) EUR 1,000 =   5*0.04*5,000, if interest runs only as of the pendency of the claim.

So, a five-fold difference in interest.

Under general Austrian civil law — §§ 1000(2) and 1333(1) ABGB (Allgemeines bürgerliches Gesetzbuch) — harm caused by delay in payment of a monetary claim is compensated through statutory interest, which only starts accruing once the action is pending (Streitanhängigkeit). For Wenzel Logistics, that date was 21 January 2021, when the action was served on Mercedes-Benz. The Austrian Competition Act (Kartellgesetz, KartG) law contains, and in prior versions contained, special provisions that do allow interest to run from the date of harm. But the temporal-application rules in §86 KartG prevented those special provisions from having any practically useful effect for Wenzel Logistics.

• §37a KartG (2013 version) required undertakings liable for a competition law infringement to pay interest on the resulting damages from the date of harm. Under §86 KartG (2013 version), however, that provision applied only to infringements committed after 28 February 2013.

• §§37c and 37d KartG (2017 amendment, BGBl. I 56/2017), transposing the Damages Directive, went further: §37d(1) confirmed that compensation also covers loss of profit, and §37d(2), applying §1333 ABGB mutatis mutandis, required interest from the date of harm. But §86(8)–(9) KartG limited these provisions to harm occurring after 26 December 2016.

The trucks cartel ran from 17 January 1997 to 18 January 2011. The infringement therefore ended well before 28 February 2013, and no part of the harm occurred after 26 December 2016 — so under Austrian law alone, neither provision of the KartG applied, and Wenzel Logistics was thrown back on the general ABGB rules.

In its request for a preliminary ruling, the OGH asked the CJEU, in essence, (i) whether Article 3(2) of the Damages Directive applies to claims brought after 26 December 2014, and (ii) whether the relevant date of harm is the date on which the inflated price was paid.²Full text of the questions:  ‘(1) Should Article 3(2) of Directive [2014/104], read in conjunction with Article 22(2) thereof, be interpreted as meaning that Article 3(2), relating to the payment of interest for harm caused by a cartel, applies to actions for damages brought before a national court after 26 December 2014? If that question is answered in the negative: what other date should be used for the purpose of applying Article 3(2) of Directive [2014/104]

With regard to the first question, the CJEU’s answer shows that the framing that focuses on the temporal application of the Directive partially misses the point. In the key paragraphs 45–51 of its judgment, the Court clarifies that the rule that interest accrues from the date of harm was already part of EU law before the Damages Directive was adopted. Article 3(2) of that directive did not create the right to interest from the time of harm; it codified an existing right that flowed from Article 101 TFEU, the principle of effectiveness, and the standard of full compensation already set out in earlier CJEU decisions, namely Manfredi³Vincenzo Manfredi v Lloyd Adriatico Assicurazioni SpA, Joined Cases C‑295/04 to C‑298/04, judgment of 13 July 2006, ECLI:EU:C:2006:461. and Marshall.⁴ Marshall v Southampton and South-West Hampshire Area Health Authority (No. 2), Case C‑271/91, judgment of 2 August 1993, ECLI:EU:C:1993:335.

Neither the provisions in the Damages Directive concerning its temporal application, nor the temporal limits in Austrian implementing law (§86 KartG), can take away a component of full compensation already required by primary EU law.

The CJEU states the consequence clearly. A national provision such as §86 KartG, insofar as it limits the applicability of §37d KartG to harm occurring after 26 December 2016 and thereby leads to interest being calculated only from notification of the action, undermines the practical effect of Article 101(1) TFEU. The national court must interpret national law in conformity with Article 101 TFEU as far as possible. Where such conforming interpretation is not possible because of contra legem limits — i.e., where the national text cannot bear the EU-conforming reading — the national court must disregard the incompatible national provision and apply Article 101 TFEU directly.⁵The CJEU cites Sumal SL v Mercedes Benz Trucks España SL, Case C‑882/19, judgment of 6 October 2021, ECLI:EU:C:2021:800, paragraphs 71–73.

Regarding the second question, the CJEU confirms the hypothesis formulated in the referral decision of the OGH: in overcharge cases, “the time the harm occurred” is usually synonymous with the time the overcharge was paid (paras 58-61); although there is some language to suggest that in certain scenarios, the dies a quo could lie earlier still⁶Para 58: “The obligation to ensure ‘full compensation’ for harm, within the meaning of Article 3(2) of Directive 2014/104, which follows from Article 101(1) TFEU, means that any Member State authority must rely on criteria that allow the establishment of the circumstance which primarily marks the time when the injured party began to suffer the harm caused by the infringement of competition law. Where various circumstances, each as relevant as the other, lead to the occurrence of that harm, it is the circumstance which occurred first that must be identified so as to serve as the point of departure for calculating interest.” This seems to provide some flexibility to ensure just outcomes in situations where the claimant was effectively deprived of the use of the funds well before payment was made.And where the harm consists of separate parts, the start date for interest must be assessed separately for each part (para 59). For a typical cartel damages case, this means that there are many starting dates for the interest calculation — one for every overcharged transaction.