… This Article is without prejudice to the rights and obligations of national courts under Article 267 TFEU.’
6 Article 10 of that directive, entitled ‘
Limitation
periods
’, states:
‘1. Member States shall, in accordance with this Article, lay down rules applicable to
limitation
periods
for bringing actions for damages. Those rules shall determine when the
limitation
period
begins to run, the duration thereof and the circumstances under which it is
interrupted
or suspended.
2. …
… of
equivalence
and
effectiveness
were observed, that latter
principle
requiring that the rules applicable to actions for safeguarding rights which individuals derive from the direct effect of EU law do not make it in practice impossible or excessively difficult to exercise rights conferred by EU law (see, to that effect, judgments of 28 March 2019, Cogeco Communications, C-637/17, EU:C:2019:263, paragraphs 42 and 43, and of 22 June 2022, Volvo and DAF Trucks, C-267/20, EU:C:2022:494, paragraph 50 …
… Member States shall ensure that a
limitation
period
is suspended or, depending on national law,
interrupted
, if a competition authority takes action for the purpose of the investigation or its proceedings in respect of an infringement of competition law to which the action for damages relates. …