Collective Actions In Europe

This open access book offers an analytical presentation of how Europe has created its own version of collective actions. In the last three decades, Europe has seen a remarkable proliferation of collective action legislation, making class actions the most successful export product of the American legal scholarship. While its spread has been surrounded by distrust and suspiciousness, today more than half of the EU Member States have introduced collective actions for damages and from those who did, more than half chose, to some extent, the opt-out system.This book demonstrates why collective actions have been felt needed from the perspective of access to justice and effectiveness of law, the European debate and the deep layers of the European reaction and resistance, revealing how the Copernican turn of class actions questions the fundamentals of the European thinking about market and public interest. Using a transsystemic presentation of the European national models, it analyzes the way collective actions were accommodated with the European regulatory environment, the novel and peculiar regulatory questions they had to address and how and why they work differently on this side of the Atlantic.

Not so long ago, class actions were considered to be a textbook example of American exceptionalism; many of their main features were assumed to be incompatible with the culture of the civil law world. However, the tide is changing; while there are now trends in the USA toward limiting or excluding class actions, notorious cases like Dieselgate are moving more and more European jurisdictions to extend the reach of their judicial collective redress mechanisms. For many new fans of class actions, collective redress has become a Holy Grail of sorts, a miraculous tool that will rejuvenate national systems of civil justice and grant them unprecedented power. Still, while the introduction of various forms of representative action has virtually become a fashion, it is anything but certain that attempting to transplant American-style class action will be successful. European judicial structures and legal culture(s) are fundamentally different, which poses a considerable challenge. This book investigates whether class actions in Europe are indeed a Holy Grail or just another wrong turn in the continuing pursuit of just and effective means of protecting the rights of citizens and businesses. It presents both positive and critical perspectives, supplemented by case studies on the latest collectivization trends in Europe’s national civil justice systems. The book also shares the experiences of some non-European jurisdictions that have developed promising hybrid forms of collective redress, such as Canada, Brazil, China, and South Africa. In closing, a selection of topical international cases that raise interesting issues regarding the effectiveness of class actions in an international context are studied and discussed.

This open access book offers an analytical presentation of how Europe has created its own version of collective actions. In the last three decades, Europe has seen a remarkable proliferation of collective action legislation, making class actions the most successful export product of the American legal scholarship. While its spread has been surrounded by distrust and suspiciousness, today more than half of the EU Member States have introduced collective actions for damages and from those who did, more than half chose, to some extent, the opt-out system.This book demonstrates why collective actions have been felt needed from the perspective of access to justice and effectiveness of law, the European debate and the deep layers of the European reaction and resistance, revealing how the Copernican turn of class actions questions the fundamentals of the European thinking about market and public interest. Using a transsystemic presentation of the European national models, it analyzes the way collective actions were accommodated with the European regulatory environment, the novel and peculiar regulatory questions they had to address and how and why they work differently on this side of the Atlantic.

This open access book offers an analytical presentation of how Europe has created its own version of collective actions. In the last three decades, Europe has seen a remarkable proliferation of collective action legislation, making class actions the most successful export product of the American legal scholarship. While its spread has been surrounded by distrust and suspiciousness, today more than half of the EU Member States have introduced collective actions for damages and from those who did, more than half chose, to some extent, the opt-out system. This book demonstrates why collective actions have been felt needed from the perspective of access to justice and effectiveness of law, the European debate and the deep layers of the European reaction and resistance, revealing how the Copernican turn of class actions questions the fundamentals of the European thinking about market and public interest. Using a transsystemic presentation of the European national models, it analyzes the way collective actions were accommodated with the European regulatory environment, the novel and peculiar regulatory questions they had to address and how and why they work differently on this side of the Atlantic. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

Comparative labour law emerging from this book [...] launches new ideas and sends new messages, well beyond close self-referential circles, out into the borderless community of scholars, social partners and economic actors, interested in pursuing social justice.-Silvana Sciarra --Book Jacket.

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