Spain’s Ministry of Justice has recently published a Draft Bill on representative actions for the protection of the collective interests of consumers, which will transpose the EU Collective Redress Directive.
The Draft Bill goes beyond introducing changes that were strictly necessary to comply with the requirements of the Directive including, significantly, by allowing parties to bring opt-out actions, in which all consumers harmed by the relevant conduct will be understood to be included in the action unless they have expressly opted out by a stated deadline. This is flexible, however, and the court may direct an opt-in action if it considers that preferable for a given case.
In this article published on our firm’s website, our Madrid office considers the Draft Bill and its implications for consumer collective actions in Spain.