I provvedimenti inibitori a favore del consumatore nella disciplina dell’Unione europea

The EU Law on Injunctive Collective Redress The article aims to illustrate the EU policy on consumers specifically facing with the injunctions for the protection of consumers’ interests. According to EU legislation (as well as to national legislation), the current mechanism available for ensuring the effective judicial protection is twofold: consumers can bring an action before the judges either personally (individual redress) or through consumer associations (collective redress). Due to the ontological weakness of the individual consumer against the infringement, the EU strengthened the protection of collective interests. The legal ground is Directive 2009/22/EC on injunctions for the protection of consumers’ interests, which, for the sake of clarity and rationality, codifies Directive 98/27/EC which has been amended several times. An in-depth analysis of the ‘injunctions’ shows that this procedural instrument aims at terminating or prohibiting infringements which are contrary to the collective interests of consumers. The approximation of legislation performed by this Directive allows an increase of the effectiveness of these injunctions and a smoother functioning of the internal market. In addition, the research illustrates the two new legislative acts which, since 2013, implemented and partially amended the Directive in force, i.e. Directive 2013/11/EU (Directive on consumer ADR), and Regulation (EU) 524/2013 (Regulation on consumer ODR), as well as the critical remarks about the application of Directive 2009/22 resulting from the Report of the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council COM(2012)635. The analysis focuses on the obstacles that prevent the injunctive actions to be effective, and on the future trends drafted by the Commission Recommendation on common principles for injunctive and compensatory collective redress mechanisms in the Member States concerning violations of rights granted under EU Law (2013/396/EU).