National governments must stop blocking proposals to allow EU citizens to bring lawsuits collectively against large companies
Date
26 Mar 2019
Sections
InfoSociety
The European Parliament today approved proposals that would allow EU consumers to bring lawsuits collectively against large companies, a process known as collective redress. However, the laws cannot be finalised because certain EU governments are blocking the measures under pressure from corporate lobbyists.
S&D spokesperson for the collective redress proposal Mady Delvaux said:
“Scandals such as Dieselgate or the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica, have had serious consequences for millions of consumers and citizens. In the US, this has led to significant compensation claims from consumer groups, with almost 15 billion dollars paid out following Dieselgate. Meanwhile EU consumers have received nothing. The European Parliament has today approved proposals to allow this. However, these proposals are still blocked by national governments in the Council.
"We wanted the proposals to go even further to not only cover consumers, as citizens are not only consumers, and representative action is also relevant in other areas such as environmental damage or damage to businesses.
“National governments need to put the interests of their citizens ahead of those of large companies. These new proposals would mean that multinationals would think twice before engaging in unethical behaviour and consumers would be adequately compensated if and when they do. We will never stop fighting for the interests of EU citizens.”