The German Federal Ministry of Justice has introduced a first draft bill to enact the EU Collective Redress Directive, more than a month after a deadline to begin enacting the Directive at national level. The stakes are considerable, the Directive is the first attempt to usher in a region-wide framework for group action claims, a move seen by supporters as a key means of boosting consumer rights.
The draft bill goes beyond the requirements of the Directive in certain respects, including that it provides for not only consumers but also small companies to be represented by the consumer entities that are entitled to bring collective actions for payment against companies. Crucially, however, it rejects an opt-out model, in which all affected consumers who do not actively opt out would have been covered by the action. Instead, an opt-in model has been chosen.
In this article published on our firm’s website, Dr Mathias Wittinghofer and Christoph Zuschlag consider the draft bill and its implications.
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