On 20 March 2014, Parliament adopted the Law to insert a Title 2 concerning collective redress in Book XVII entitled "Special Legal Procedures" of the New Commercial Code and to insert the definitions that are specific to this Book XVII in Book I of the Commercial Code (Wetsontwerp tot invoeging van Titel 2 "Rechtsvordering tot collectief herstel" in Boek XVII "Bijzondere gerechtelijke procedures" van het Wetboek van economisch recht en houdende invoeging van de definities eigen aan Boek XVII in Boek I van het Wetboek van economisch recht/Projet de loi portant insertion d'un Titre 2 "De l'action en réparation collective" au Livre XVII "Procédures juridictionnelles particulières" du Code de droit économique et portant insertion des définitions propres au Livre XVII dans le Livre I du Code de droit économique – the Law). The Law enables the collective recovery from businesses of harm suffered by a group of consumers on the basis of the same contractual cause (See, VBB on Belgian Business Law, Volume 2013, No. 12, p. 13 and Volume 2014, No. 1, p. 12 and No. 2, p. 10, available at www.vbb.com).
The Law lists exhaustively an array of legal grounds for a collective redress procedure, including the laws on market practices, product liability, competition, intellectual property, medicines and defective products. In contrast, the general tort law of Article 1382Civil Code and labour law claims cannot give rise to collective redress.
The collective redress procedure can only be lodged by a group representative, who will be able to act on behalf of a large number of adversely affected consumers who may not yet be known at the time of the start of the legal proceedings. This group representative must be either (i) an established organisation protecting consumer interests (which in practice only includes the consumer organisation Test-Aankoop/Test-Achats); (ii) other specialised organisations with at least 3 years of legal personality and a core business that is linked to the harm suffered by the consumer group; or (iii) the Federal Ombudsman for consumers (Federale Ombudsdienst voor de consument/ Médiateur fédéral pour le consommateur) whose role will nevertheless be limited to the negotiation phase. Consequently, lawyers and other organisations not satisfying these criteria are excluded from representing consumers in a collective redress procedure.
The Law grants exclusive competence to deal with collective redress procedures to the courts of Brussels. The court to which a collective redress procedure is referred to will first verify whether the group representative meets the criteria defined in the Law and whether the collective redress procedure will be more effective than individual consumer claims. If this is the case, the Court can decide to apply an opt-in regime (only consumers who have explicitly expressed their will to be part of the group of plaintiffs) or an opt-out system (consumers are automatically part of the group unless they explicitly express their will not to). However, the opt-in system is compulsory for foreign nationals.
The Law creates in a first stage a mandatory negotiation phase, in which the group representative and the potential defendant will try to reach a collective redress agreement. If successful, the Court will formally approve and validate this agreement in a judgment. If the negotiations fail, the group representative can start actual legal proceedings on the merits. When a collective redress agreement or decision is reached, the Court will appoint a liquidator (schadeafwikkelaar/liquidateur). The liquidator is in charge of listing the consumers who are entitled to receive redress and is responsible for the proper performance of the collective redress agreement or decision.
The Law will be published shortly in the Belgian Official Journal (Belgisch Staatsblad/Moniteur belge). The date of entry into force of the Law will be determined by Royal Decree.
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