Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-03-26-Speech-4-045"
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"en.20090326.3.4-045"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, thank you very much for the opportunity to contribute to this debate. I am pleased, Mrs Kuneva, that at the request of the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats you have been instrumental in getting the proposal relating to collective redress from the DG Competition, which to start with planned to regulate this according to the practice in the US, to be developed using a horizontal approach and to actually treat everyone equally within the European Union – small and medium-sized enterprises, consumers, workers and entrepreneurs. This is an important step forward, which we wish to support in a very constructive and positive manner.
We are aware that in many individual cases, of course, a Community claim for the enforcement of collective rights appears to be more successful than individual enforcement. However, we remain convinced that the way of skimming off summary actions that protects the consumer the most is not collective redress, but public enforcement of such claims, for example by means of a skimming claim as in the German Law against unfair competition, because individual consumers will consider very carefully whether in fact to file a collective action with a lawyer for EUR 4.99 or whether it would actually be more helpful if, for example, these claims were continually monitored at public level by an ombudsman and enforced by appropriate means. Thus, with regard to the question of how to link these two elements, I believe that we need to consider carefully how we can help consumers in the most effective way, as consumers often do not have the time to go to a lawyer, but instead want to find help quickly and easily.
The second point that I see as important – and here, too, your Directorate General has done a very good job – is that the most interesting element was a discussion in the Bavarian representation in Brussels, where in response to the question of whether, by using European legal means, we can actually rule out the type of collective redress found in the US, a representative of your Directorate General clearly said ‘no we cannot’. That in our opinion means that we must not disregard this model completely. We must continue to discuss it, but to do so with great care and to include the Member States and their legal options in the discussion so that ultimately we achieve what it is we all want, and that is a real European model that is particularly attractive to consumers and that also protects small and medium-sized enterprises."@en1
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