At the end of a negotiation that lasted almost 9 hours, the third trilogue on the directive on collective redress for european consumers ” has announced on Monday a positive result. The directive is well on its way to adoption after the text negotiated between the rapporteur Didier Geoffroy and the Board will be formally approved by the Parliament in plenary and the Council. It is an additional right which opens up to european consumers to businesses. The Commission had introduced this text in April 2018. The necessity of this text has appeared in the wake of the scandal Dieselgate, disastrous for Volkswagen and which has just experienced a rebound in Germany. Last may, the federal Court of justice, in Karlsruhe, was sentenced by the German manufacturer to reimburse, in part, a customer, who had bought a model equipped with a diesel engine rigged. The German justice opens the way to tens of thousands of procedures five years after the revelations about the rigging of the engines…
Read also of group Action or collective action : which way to choose ?
Specifically, the european directive will allow, in the future, class actions against the illegal practices. The Council was not of the most enthusiastic because of the legal insecurity that this type of action is to run the business. The Council would have wished to exempt the air carriers and railway companies of this type of costly actions. But Geoffroy Didier and his colleagues have held good : “I never imagined not being able to explain to the european public and the citizens that when they had paid a plane ticket and that this ticket was not refunded by the airline, they could not bring an action against the airline company if it had committed an illegal act “, he said, Tuesday morning, in the JURI committee where the mep LR gave an account of the negotiation.
Read also Dieselgate : the stages of a descent to the underworld
The Council also sought to push back the time of transcription of the directive in 42 months, although the current european Parliament would not have seen the implementation of the text. Again, the european Parliament’s rapporteurs have held up well, and, in the final agreement, the time limits for transposition have been shortened to 24 months (6 months longer than the initial proposal of the Parliament).
associations of consumers approved
To date, nine member States do not have this type of class action, including Poland, the Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Estonia and Ireland… France has introduced a way of a class action by the law Hamon of 2014. Its implementation is, however, quite difficult so that, in the two years that followed its entry into force, only 7 were collective actions under the act Hamon. Consumers will have the choice between the collective action of national and the remedy to be european. Only the loss of property will be reimbursed, and non-moral prejudice. A few years ago, when Ryanair has cancelled massively of flights, the passengers injured were not able to capture collectively the courts. In Ireland, which included the company, the class actions were not included in the positive law.
The european text provides that the consumers are represented by at least one qualified entity by member State. These should have at least one year of existence, do not be in a conflict of interest and do not hide a law firm or a private fund. Each member State will publish the official list of the consumer associations approved. Unlike the american system, in Europe, the full compensation for any consumer will. The consumer associations are not supposed to gain profits. The States have the obligation to inform consumers about the action in progress and the results of legal actions commenced.
