Introduction

There is a general recognition in Europe that the existing methods of compensating the victims of consumer fraud, anti-competitive behaviour, fraud on investors and other actions with multiple victims are inadequate. Some look longingly at the results obtained in the US class action system but in Europe most people recoil at what are viewed as its excesses.

As the limited survey in Section IV in this chapter shows, two countries in Europe have new class action laws and several others have been working around the edges of the apparent bars to class actions, both legal and cultural, in their countries to provide some effective means for large groups of claimants to obtain damage relief. Most European countries and the European Union itself allow collective or representative actions for injunctions. Even the US role of lawyer's financing class actions on a contingent fee basis is being filled in a limited way by third-party funders (albeit to date mostly in normal commercial litigation). The question remains whether these various substitutes for US class actions (‘class actions lite’) will provide an adequate and efficient basis for compensating large numbers of claimants without impairing procedural fairness or otherwise suffering any of the maladies associated with the US system.