EU as a Normative Power Enhancing Access to Justice: Small Claims Litigation and Romania

Abstract

The right of access to justice and to a court are guaranteed under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights and are part of general principles of European Union law. A Small claims procedure (EC Regulation No. 861/2007 of European Parliament and Council of 11 July 2007) was adopted to facilitate cross-border litigators in cases involving small debts. Some European legal systems (but not Romania) had fast 'ad hoc' procedures for internal small claims in situations other than cross-border litigation. The article examine in a first part the application of the European Regulation in Romania from an access to justice perspective. The analysis will be purely exegetical since there is yet no actual practice.A New Code of Civil Procedure has introduced in Romania an internal small claim procedure similar to the European one. This special procedure will ensure for national litigators the same advantages as those recognized by European regulation on cross-border context. The second part and the third part of the paper evaluate, from the same access to justice perspective, the European regulation vis-a-vis this national procedure. It seems that the European Regulation has acted as a modernizing force for Romanian Civil Procedure.