Product liability
Europe

During the late 2010s, the comparative outcomes for consumers affected by the Volkswagen emissions scandal vividly highlighted the deficiencies of European civil procedure as applied to a defendant who had already publicly admitted to violations of U.S. environmental laws. In the United States, Volkswagen quickly settled the consolidated consumer class action and agreed to pay US$11.2 billion directly to consumers affected by its allegedly defective diesel vehicles. In contrast, consumers in Europe and elsewhere around the world had to fight much longer and harder for less compensation. Many of them were unimpressed with Volkswagen's vigorous advocacy of legal defenses based on technical differences between different nations' environmental laws; from their perspective, they had paid for a "clean diesel" car, they did not get a "clean diesel" car, and did not understand why they deserved far less compensation than American consumers for what they perceived to be the same defect. This embarrassed Germany into dropping its longstanding opposition to European collective redress proposals, and the country also made reforms to its domestic civil procedure. As a result, on 25 November 2020, the European Parliament and Council adopted the Directive on Representative Actions. Paragraph 1 of Article 1 of the Directive states that it is intended "to improve consumers' access to justice."
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