Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/8312
Title: Harmonising consumer collective redress within the European Union
Authors: Camilleri, Yanika (2013)
Keywords: Consumer protection -- Law and legislation -- European Union countries
Class actions (Civil procedure) -- European Union countries
Citizen suits (Civil procedure) -- European Union countries
Issue Date: 2013
Abstract: The Green Paper on Consumer Collective Redress and the European Commission's Final Analytical Report having as their foundation Articles 81 and 169 of the Treaty of Lisbon depict the embarkation of a long awaited journey faced with a challenging task in trying to seek a national European Union instrument or create a mechanism which would dismantle the barriers to trade in terms of access, effectiveness and affordability to justice through Consumer Collective Redress. The Green Paper on Consumer Collective Redress focuses on the resolution of mass claim cases and aims at providing effective means of collective redress for citizens across the European Union by affording various options on which consultation is pursued, without seeking out to take a decision and choose one particular mechanism. In the first Chapter the writer introduces the reader to the instrument of collective redress by focusing on the intrinsic nature of this mechanism by giving an overview of the advantages which are brought about by consumer collective redress when compared with individual redress mechanisms. The conventional historiography of the American Class Action, the fore-father of the modern collective redress mechanism is retraced in the second Chapter which offers a detailed study on the group litigation in the United States. The development of the Class Action and Class Arbitration in the United States is discussed to provide the backdrop for a proposed Consumer Collective Redress mechanism at a European Union level. The migration of this doctrine over the Atlantic to the European Union and the Member States resulted in the Europeanization of this doctrine. The third chapter illustrates a historic-legal narrative of the past thirty years of the Europeanization of Consumer Collective Redress. This chapter takes the author on a journey commencing in Ghent in the year 1982 whereby the European Union recognised the existence of the Consumer Collective Redress mechanism for the first time. Throughout the journey the reader will experience the developing relationship between the European Union and Consumer Collective Redress. The major obstacles and advantages that exist in the national Consumer Collective Redress mechanisms are also analysed and compared against the backdrop of the benefits and deficiencies of the fore-father of the multi-party action namely the American Class Action. Consumer Collective Redress flourished through the series of benchmarks relevant in evaluating the adequacy of consumer redress proffered by the various Member States which Commissioner Magdalena Kuneva proposed in the year 2007 in Portugal. As a result of the ten bench mark elements which the Commissioner of Consumer Protection proposed which were followed by workshops which the Directorate General for Health and Consumers held with consumer associations, business representatives, academics and lawyers in May and June 2008, the Green Paper on Consumer Collective Redress was born on the 27th of November 2008. The Green Paper on Consumer Collective Redress and the various options which it lays down are studied in great depth in the fourth Chapter.
Description: M.JURIS.
URI: https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar//handle/123456789/8312
Appears in Collections:Dissertations - FacLaw - 2013

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