On 15/11/2010, last week, BEUC organised a conference on Group Action. Documents available on the conference webpage are reproduced below.
Group Action: a necessity for consumers
Conference organised jointly by BEUC (the European Consumers’ Organisation) and Test-Achats/Test-Ankoop (Belgian Consumer Association) to highlight legislative initiatives needed in order to improve access to justice when multiple plaintiffs share similar claims against the same defendant (eg. losses suffered by a large number of victims).
This conference bears the label of the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the European Union. It will gather key opinion leaders, stakeholders and legal practitioners of collective redress procedures in Europe. They will address the viability of a European legislative framework on this pressing issue and the attendant policy and practical arguments involved.
Keynote addresses by Mr. John Dalli, European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Policy and Mr. Paul Magnette, Belgian Minister in Charge of Consumer Protection, will be followed by a series of chaired panel formats.
To drive the discussion, the Conference will be comprised of four panels. On each panel, due attention has been paid to practitioners having ‘field experience’ in collective claim litigation. The first panel will focus on consumer organisations’ experience of national systems of redress, while the second session will look into the key elements of a judicial collective action mechanism. The third panel will examine the Belgian project for the introduction of a collective action procedure at national level and the conference will close with a fourth session organised in the form of a ‘panel-debate’ among EU decision-makers on the EU level initiatives.
Conference webpage
Program
09:00 Registration & welcome coffee
09:30 Welcome by Jorge Pegado Liz, ECOSOC member
09:35 Introduction by Test-Achats Director, Serge Maucq
09:40 Keynote speech, John Dalli, EU Commissioner for Consumer Policy
10:00 Session 1: National systems in practice: efficiency and limits
Chair: David Ortega, OCU, Spain
Panel members:
Luís Silveira Rodrigues, DECO, Portugal
Alain Bazot, UFC Que Choisir, France
Gilles de Halleux, Test Achats, Belgium
Koos Peters, Consumentenbond, the Netherlands
Docekal Ulrike, VKI, Austria
11:00 Questions and Answers from the floor
11:15 Coffee Break
11:30 Session 2: Group Action: how to make it work?
Chair: Hans Brockmans, Editor of ‘Trends’
Panel members:
Jacqueline Riffaut-Silk, Judge at the French Cour de Cassation
Gerrit Meincke, FORIS
Ben Knüppe, Former Chairman of Dexia Bank Netherlands); DSB Bank N.V., trustee
Deborah Prince, ‘Which?’, United Kingdom
Jérôme Franck, Avocat registered with the Paris Bar
12:30 - 13:00 Questions and Answers from the floor
13:00 - 14:00 Lunch
14:00 Key note speech by Mr Paul Magnette, Belgian Minister in charge of Consumer Protection
14:20 Session 3: Focus of the Belgian draft bill which provides a complete set of rules to facilitate consumer group litigation
Chair: Jean-Philippe Ducart, Test-Achats
Presentation of the proposal:
- Andrée Puttemans, Professor at the Université Libre de Bruxelles
- Hakim Boularbah, Professor at the Université Libre de Bruxelles
Panel members:
- Nico De Bie, Test-Achats specialist
- Renaat Landuyt, Belgian MP
- Christian Brotcorne, Belgian MP
- Emmanuel Plasschaert, Avocat, Brussels Bar
- Charles Gheur, FEB
15 :45 Coffee Break
16:00 Session 4: Coherence between EU initiatives? Panel debate
Chair : Jorge Pegado Liz, ECOSOC member
Panel members:
- Heide Rühle, Member of the European Parliament
- Robert Rochefort, Member of the European Parliament
- Eddy De Smijter, DG COMP
- Henrik Øe, Danish Consumer Ombudsman
- Monique Goyens, Director General of BEUC, the European Consumers Organisation
17:15 Questions and Answers from the floor
17:45 Closing remarks by Paolo Martinello, President of BEUC
18:00 Cocktail
What is Group Action?
A “Group Action” is a mechanism for collective legal redress which facilitates cases involving multiple plaintiffs with similar claims against the same defendant or defendants. It covers a specific situation where the same illegal behaviour of a trader harms several consumers and these consumers gather their claims to act against the trader for compensation of the damage they have suffered individually.
Positions
Documents
Belgian draft bill which provides a complete set of rules to facilitate consumer group litigation:
Links
Dedicated pages on the official website of the European Commission:
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