Cross-border claims against defendants across Europe: CJEU clarifies the “anchor defendant” jurisdiction under the Brussels I Recast Regulation

Arab energy suppliers brought damages claims in Amsterdam against 14 affiliated companies for anticompetitive collusion on the market for submarine and underground power cables. Only one of the 14 companies – which, moreover, had not itself been directly involved in the cartel – was domiciled in Amsterdam for jurisdictional purposes. The other 13 companies had their registered offices and places of central administration elsewhere, both within and outside the Netherlands.

Nevertheless, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), in its judgment of 16 April 2026 in Joined Cases C-672/23 and C-673/23, held that international and territorial jurisdiction could be concentrated in Amsterdam.

The so-called “anchor defendant” jurisdiction under Article 8(1) of Regulation (EU) No 1215/2012 (Brussels I Recast) allows multiple defendants to be sued together before the courts of the place where one of them is domiciled, provided that the claims are so closely connected that it is expedient to hear and determine them together in order to avoid the risk of irreconcilable judgments resulting from separate proceedings.

More interesting than the specifically competition-law aspects of the Court’s reasoning – in particular, the jurisdictional concept of a single economic unit – are the CJEU’s general observations on the requirements for relying on an anchor defendant, as explained by Dr Joshua Blach, lawyer, and Marcus van Bevern, partner and lawyer:

• Foreseeability is not a separate requirement
  Whether a co-defendant could have foreseen being sued before the courts of the anchor defendant’s domicile is not a separate condition for the application of Article 8(1). Rather, foreseeability forms part of the general principles governing the assessment of jurisdiction and, in practice, plays a subordinate role.

• A high threshold for abuse of jurisdiction
  The prospects of success of the claim against the anchor defendant are, as a rule, irrelevant when determining jurisdiction. Reliance on the anchor defendant amounts to an abuse capable of defeating jurisdiction only where the claim is manifestly unfounded, artificially constructed or where the claimant has no genuine interest whatsoever in pursuing it.

The CJEU’s interpretation of anchor-defendant jurisdiction is likely to have implications for cross-border litigation beyond the competition-law context of the cases referred to it – for example, in proceedings against multiple contractual counterparties or joint tortfeasors from different Member States.

Parties bringing cross-border claims against multiple defendants – or seeking to resist the consolidation of such claims in a single jurisdiction – should therefore take note of the judgment, whether or not submarine and underground cables are involved.