Category: Consumer rights
Research is for the people: but where are the people?
A few weeks ago, the European research community held its annual powwow with the European Research and Innovation (R&I) Days, organised by the Commission’s Directorate-General in charge of research. The event gathered (virtually) more than 20,000 participants. It was an...
Taking on the bank – Lessons from using, not abusing, our group action system.
After four years, countless hours and 1.42 million euros spent, we won the biggest group action suit in the history of our country against Norway’s biggest bank. The cheers were many, but so were the lessons. Background In 2015, The...
Behind the frosty glass: the EU’s Unfair Contract Terms Directive as a tool for justice in the modern financial sector
An EU directive about what is an unfair contract term is proving really helpful when it comes to protecting consumers in finance.
A law allowing consumer compensation that Portugal can be proud of
Imagine this: your telecom company charged you more than it ought to, or you bought a car and the company misled you and you suffered damages. Or your personal data was sold, without your knowledge or consent, to a third...
Successes and challenges of the French law allowing group actions
The French collective redress procedure, where consumers can go to court as a group, will soon enter its 5th year of operation. Time to have a look at what has been achieved (or not). It’s certainly food for thought in...
Ryanair strike: why passengers urgently need collective redress
It can be frustrating to be a passenger rights specialist nowadays. Even if at BEUC we don’t deal with consumer complaints, a task that our members fulfil, I still get a lot of questions from family/friends/colleagues asking for advice when...
Altroconsumo’s experience of collective redress
If the market is the carrot, then group actions are the stick. The creation of an EU-wide collective redress procedure is currently being hotly debated in Brussels. In Italy meanwhile, the Italian consumer group Altroconsumo has used this stick 14 times...
US-style litigation culture? Only if you like alternative facts!
The howls of protest from business groups could be heard across Europe. On 11 April, the Commission proposed to make collective compensation claims possible when large numbers of consumers have been harmed by the same trader. Cue uproar and...
Collective redress for European consumers – yes, we can
I was sitting back in a train from Strasbourg to Brussels in early spring 1998. Looking at the landscape in a train often gives you the distance you need to analyse something happening in your life. I was a young...
Air passenger rights have not taken off
We don’t know if readers are among the 25% air passengers who have experienced flight delays, but they very well could be because that is a shockingly high percentage. We have released an international survey together with 7 other consumer...