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This paper analyses Belgium’s new consumer class action act (Act of 28 March 2014 introducing a consumer collective redress action in the Code of Economic Law), which entered into force on 1 September 2014. First, attention is paid to the three class action prerequisites: the violation of a Belgian or European consumer regulation or act, an adequate class representative (i.e., a consumer association or the Consumer Ombudsman Service) and the superiority of the class action mechanism. Subsequently, the exclusive competence of the Brussels courts and the opt-in or opt-out system are discussed. The procedure consists of four phases, which are analysed in detail: a certification phase, a mandatory negotiation phase, a possible phase on the merits of the case, and an enforcement phase under the supervision of a collective claims settler. The paper concludes that a holistic approach to tackle mass harms in Belgium is missing. The new consumer class action contains some procedural bottlenecks that could undermine its efficiency. Its biggest shortcoming is the lack of appropriate rules on funding and financing.

On 28 June 2014, the Faculty of Law of the University of Sarajevo hosted a workshop entitled ‘Collective Redress in South-East Europe’, organised by the Law Faculties of the Universities of Sarajevo and Zagreb with the financial support of the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). The workshop gathered law professors from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro. The guest of honour was Ms Diana Wallis, President of the European Law Institute (ELI). Collective redress is a relatively new topic among lawyers in South-East Europe. While certain countries of the region have horizontal legislation on collective redress, legislators in other countries still hesitate to introduce this mechanism, ‘replacing’ it with different forms of organisational claims. Even in countries that introduced a collective redress mechanism, decisional practice is quite scarce. The novelty of the collective redress mechanism in the region of South-East Europe, as well as its relevance in the European Union, especially given the recent initiatives of the European Commission, incited the organisers to arrange this exchange of views between researchers from South-East Europe and the European Union.

Model case procedures have some fundamentals in common with collective redress in civil law countries. This is particularly true in the field of investor protection. This area is highly regulated and marked by resulting enforcement failures, which led the German legislator to the enactment of the KapMuG and its recent amendment, highlighting exemplary elements of model case procedures. A survey of the ongoing activities of the European Union in the area of collective redress and of its repercussions at Member State level therefore forms a suitable basis for the following analysis of the 2012 amendment to the KapMuG. It clearly brings into focus a shift from sector-specific regulation with an emphasis on the cross-border aspect of protecting consumers, towards a ‘coherent approach’ strengthening the enforcement of EU law. As a result, today, regulatory policy and collective redress are two sides of the same coin. With respect to the KapMuG, such a development brings about some tension between its aim to aggregate small individual claims as efficiently as possible and the dominant role of individual procedural rights in German civil procedure. This conflict can be illustrated by some specific elements of the KapMuG: its scope of application; the three-tier structure of a model case procedure; the newly introduced notification of claims; and the new opt-out settlement under amended §§ 17–19.