[1] A survey carried out by the European Commission found that more than 79% of EU consumers would exercise their rights with other claimants in the event of joint proceedings.
The instrument of class action does not confer any new rights or create new claims but only provides new ways of asserting them.
The Commission's attempts to enact a European collective redress scheme were stalled for many years.
The Directive was finally enacted in the aftermath of the 2015 Volkswagen emissions scandal, in which it became painfully clear that existing civil procedure laws were unable to deliver justice to consumers across Europe in a swift or cost-efficient manner.
While European courts were jammed for several years with consumers forced to relitigate the same issues in every case on an individual basis, American consumers were able to extract an US$11.2 billion class action settlement from Volkswagen after only about one-and-a-half years of litigation.