Collective enforcement: European prospects in light of Swedish experience
Abstract
On the 1st of January 2003, the Group Proceedings Act (GPA) of 2002 came into force in Sweden. The Act provides a possibility of bringing group proceedings when a plurality of claims against the same defendant are based on the same or similar circumstances (commonality) and when the claims cannot be equally well pursued through other procedural forms (superiority). Someone is given the power of attorney of the case for the members of a group. The Group members are not parties to the trial and need not be actively involved. A ruling in the process, however, is binding both for and against all members of the group. The Group Proceedings Act provides for three types of group actions. Group actions can be instituted by 1) an individual member of a group that can in itself be a natural person or a legal entity (private group action), 2) by an association of consumers or wage-earners (organisational group action) and 3) by a designated public authority (public group action). The public body authorized to file a public group action for consumer redress is the Consumer Ombudsman.
The European Commission has in its Consumer Policy Strategy for 2007-2013 underlined the importance of effective redress mechanism for consumers. The Commission has announced its intention to consider action on consumer collective redress. In 2008 the European Commission published a Green Paper on Consumer Collective Redress. The purpose of this paper was inter alia to assess the current state of redress mechanism in the different member states. According to the Commission the current redress situation in the EU is unsatisfactory and has presented a number of options which could be used to address this issue.
The purpose of this article is firstly to describe the Swedish legislation on the collective redress, especially the public group action, where the action is filed by the Swedish Consumer Ombudsman. Secondly, the article will discuss the Swedish legislation in the light of the forthcoming changes proposed by the Commission.