European Consumer Access to Justice Revisited

Stefan Wrbka is Associate Professor for European and Comparative Private Law at Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan. His principal field of academic research concerns various aspects of consumer protection law, with a focus on developments within the European Union.

'European Consumer Access to Justice Revisited takes into account both procedural and substantive law questions in order to give the term 'access to justice' an enhanced meaning. Specifically, it analyses developments and recent trends in EU consumer law and aims to evaluate their potential for increasing consumer confidence in the cross-border market. Via a critical assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of the means initiated at the EU level, the author highlights possible detriments to the cross-border business-to-consumer (B2C) market. To remedy this, he introduces an alternative method of creating a legal framework that facilitates B2C transactions in the EU - 'access to justice 2.0'.' Hans-W. Micklitz, Journal of Consumer Policy

• Part I. Setting the Stage: Access to Justice 2.0: 1. At the very outset; 2. Access to justice 2.0: breaking it into pieces; Part II. Procedural Law: The Traditional Pillar of Access to Justice 2.0: 3. A brief outline of the developments at the pan-EU level; 4. Prime examples; 5. Compensatory collective redress: the next step?; 6. Where to go from here?; Part III. Substantive Law: Complementing Access to Justice 2.0: 7. Widening the scope of the value-oriented justice discussion; 8. Substantive consumer law-making in the course of time; 9. Recent trends and developments; 10. The common European sales law; 11. Summarising comments on the defragmentation of substantive consumer laws in the context of the CRD and the CESL; Part IV. Consumer Access to Justice 2.0: A Multidimensional Framework: 12. From the current state of consumer law to consumer access to justice 2.0; 13. The justice debate and consumer legislation; 14. (Responses to) counter-arguments to third-party intervention; 15. Consumer empowerment; 16. Lessons to be drawn.