A Study On Jurisdiction Of EU Cross-border Consumer Collective Litigation

With the acceleration of the global integration process,cross-border consumption has gradually increased,resulting in a large number of cross-border consumer disputes concerning different countries,and class actions have become one of the ways for parties to seek relief.In 2013,the European Commission adopted the EU Collective Redress Recommendation,which aims to coordinate different collective redress systems among EU member states,promoting the development of class actions in the EU,including representative institutions,funding guarantees,and opt-in methods,and have more comprehensive and detailed regulations.However,the Recommendation is not binding mandatorily,so there are many different collective redress systems among member states.In addition,the Recommendation does not pay attention to the issue of private international law arising from collective redress.At present,the special provisions on consumer collective actions are still missing.The issue of cross-border consumer collective action jurisdiction is mainly referred to the provisions of the Brussels Regulation I.The jurisdictional rules for consumer contract litigation mainly include agreement jurisdiction rules,special jurisdiction rules and general jurisdiction rules.Because consumer collective actions are different from individual lawsuits,they have the characteristics of large number of people and public welfare.On the issue of the jurisdiction of class actions,therefore it will show the particularity of individual litigation.The Brussels Regulation I shows three problems in the application of consumer class actions.One is whether the protective jurisdiction rules are applicable,the other is that it is difficult to determine the jurisdictional court in the case of a majority of parties,and the third is the more complicated jurisdictional conflicts issues.Due to the lack of special rules for consumer collective litigation jurisdiction,the answers to the above three questions need to refer to relevant EU judicial practices.Firstly,regarding the question of whether the protective jurisdiction rule continues to apply,the EU jurisprudence shows a negative attitude: The European Court of Justice denied the relationship between the consumer representative agency and the consumer contract in the case of VKI v.Karl Heinz Henkel.Under the circumstances,the preconditions for the application of protective jurisdiction cannot be met.In the case of AMT v.Dr Marzillier and Others,the court held that in the case of large-scale consumer litigation,if a protective jurisdiction is applied,it is necessary to identify each consumer identity,which brings a lot of evidence to quote.According to the court's conclusion in the Maximilian Schrems v.Facebook case,the protective jurisdiction rules cannot be applied to collective litigations,and it is precisely because of the prevention of abuse of the principle;Secondly,the issue of determining the jurisdiction of the court in large-scale litigation.In general,it mainly includes the court of the defendant's domicile and the court of contract performance.However,in the judicial precedent,there is less room for the defendant's domicile to apply,and consumers are more inclined to choose domestic remedies to sue in their own courts.And the application of the contract enforcement court in consumer collective litigations has unclear criteria.Which court should be chosen to rule among the courts where many contracts are performed is unknown;Thirdly,for jurisdictional conflicts,European courts tend to use the related action rules to coordinate,but this also requires the linkage of the domestic mechanisms of member states.Therefore,the judicial practice of the European Court of Justice still has its shortcomings in solving the latter two problems.How to determine the coordination of jurisdictional courts and jurisdictional conflicts in consumer collective litigation requires further prospects.For the determination of jurisdictional courts,the International Bar Association guidelines for class action jurisdictions recommend that the courts that are best suited to hear cases should be selected based on certain criteria.The US Multi-District Litigation also provides a similar way.The panel of judges in a number of jurisdictional courts chooses the most appropriate court to exercise jurisdiction in accordance with a certain standard.Both of the above mechanisms have reference significance for the improvement of collective litigation;for the coordination of jurisdiction conflicts,on the one hand,it is necessary to coordinate different collective redress mechanisms of member states,and focus on the unified system of collective litigation.On the other hand,other collective redress mechanisms,such as the KapMuG demonstration lawsuit in Germany,provide inspiration to reduce the conflict of jurisdiction and the emergence of contradictory judgments.