Data protection and the construction of collective redress in Europe: exploring challenges and opportunities

Abstract

... The European Union (EU) is currently revising its collective redress policy. The European Commission has defined the term as follows: Collective redress is a procedural mechanism which allows for reasons of procedural economy and/or efficiency of enforcement, many single claims (relating to the same case) to be bundled into a single court action … It thus constitutes a key mechanism to ensure that rights do not only exist on paper but are enforced.1 Between May and August 2017, the European Commission held a public consultation to assess the impact of its Recommendation 2013/396/EU2 and ‘to check effectiveness and efficiency of the rules put in place in the Member States’ in order to consider whether further measures are necessary.3 In this Recommendation and the related Communication,4 the Commission called on all Member States to have horizontal collective redress ‘mechanisms at national level for both injunctive and compensatory relief concerning violations of rights granted under Union Law’.5 These documents also set out certain common principles to adhere to in the national collective redress schemes. The appropriate measures were supposed to be put in place by 26 July 2015. As a result of its assessment and some recent consumer mass harm controversies, in April 2018, the European Commission released a proposal for a stronger instrument—a Directive on representative actions.6