Collective Litigation in Europe: Law and Practice

Editors

Mary E. Bartkus is Special Counsel at Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP in New York. Previously, she was Executive Director and Senior Counsel to Merck & Co., Inc., responsible for the company’s international litigation and arbitration, including multijurisdictional and cross border class, group, and other multi-party and complex litigation in jurisdictions worldwide, including litigation in many jurisdictions throughout Europe. She is a member of the New Jersey and New York bars and is admitted to practice before the United States District Courts for the District of New Jersey, Southern and Eastern Districts of New York; the United States Courts of Appeal for the Second, Third, Federal, District of Columbia, and Ninth Circuits; and the United States Supreme Court.

Mary Bartkus is a Master of the Bench and a former Director of The John C. Lifland American Inn of Court, which focuses on intellectual property and federal practice in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. She is an arbitrator and a member of the American Arbitration Association – International Centre for Dispute Resolution (AAA-ICDR) International, Commercial, and Life Sciences Panels of Arbitrators. She holds a J.D. degree from Rutgers University School of Law – Newark and a B.A. degree, magna cum laude, in Philosophy from Kean College of New Jersey (Kean University).

She delivered a series of nine lectures on the history of the global Vioxx litigation at Eötvös Loránd University Faculty of Law in Budapest and lectured at Emory University School of Law on multijurisdictional product litigation in the European Union and on dispute avoidance and resolution in international business transactions. Her publications include chapters on Injunctions in the Third Circuit published annually in the earliest editions of New Jersey Federal Civil Procedure (New Jersey Law Journal / American Law Media Books), Do Collective Redress Mechanisms Deliver Justice? in Delivering Justice: A Holistic and Multidisciplinary Approach, Liber Amicorum in Honour of Christopher Hodges (Hart Publishing 2022), Dispute Resolution Provisions in Life Sciences Agreements, 75:2 Disp. Resol. J. 1 (Nov. 2020), and The Cost to Society of Pharmaceutical Mass Tort Litigation, a lecture for the Foundation for Law, Justice and Society at Wolfson College, University of Oxford available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3402725.

Magdalena Tulibacka is Director of The Center for International and Comparative Law at Emory University School of Law in Atlanta, where she is Visiting Assistant Professor of Practice, teaching and researching European, international, and comparative law and policy. Dr. Tulibacka holds a PhD in Law (2004, Westminster University, London) and a Magister Iuris degree in Polish Law (1998, University of Nicolas Copernicus, Toruń, Poland). After completing her PhD studies in London, she joined the University of Oxford’s Centre for Socio-Legal Studies as a post-doc and later became research fellow at the Centre and a member of the University of Oxford’s Congregation. She was then appointed Senior Lecturer in European and Comparative Law at the University of Westminster Law School in London.

Dr. Tulibacka teaches EU law, public international law, comparative law, European and comparative product liability law, European, international and comparative consumer law, European, international and comparative access to justice, ADR, international business transactions, and business law. She taught at the University of Oxford, the University of Westminster, the Warsaw and Cracow Universities in Poland, the Academy of European Law in Trier, and other academic institutions. She wrote, co-wrote, and edited a number of books on comparative product liability law, global class actions, comparative costs of litigation, and Polish tort law. Her other academic publications cover EU law, EU consumer law, EU product liability law, Polish consumer and contract law, harmonization of civil procedures by the EU, and ADR. She participated in pan-European and global comparative research projects, spoke at international legal and corporate conferences, trained European civil servants, advised the European Parliament and European Commission on civil procedure, consumer law and collective redress, and advised multi-national corporations on European Union law and policy.  

As a Polish law expert, she was a member of several groups of scholars working on foundations for harmonized EU law: the Common Core group (product liability law), the University of Bielefeld Consumer Acquis Study, and the British Institute of International and Comparative Law Unfair Commercial Practices Study. She was a member of the Comparative Law Committee of the Civil Justice Council (advisory body to UK Ministry of Justice), and a member of the advisory panel of UK Government’s Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (review of English consumer law). Currently she is participating in the Max Planck Institute for Procedural Law Luxembourg project on Comparative Procedure Law and Justice.

István Varga is a Professor and Head of the Department of Civil Procedure Law at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE Faculty of Law) in Budapest, the head of the law firm at PROVARIS Varga & Partners, and the head of the firm’s civil litigation and arbitration group. Between 2013 and 2016 he was a member and scientific secretary of the Main Committee for the Codification of Civil Procedure, one of the developers of the Expert Proposal of the new Code of Civil Procedure, and the creator of the Permanent Arbitration Rules of the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. In 2011–2012 Prof. Dr. Varga was a senior professor at the Academy of International Law in The Hague. He authored a monograph on comparative procedural law and arbitration law, which was awarded first prize by the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce in 2006. He was a member of several jurisprudence analysis groups of the Curia, and between 1998 and 2003 was an advisor to the second President of the Constitutional Court. In addition to his domestic legal and academic activities, Prof. Dr. Varga is an honorary professor at the University of Leipzig, and a doctor honoris causa of the University of Göttingen, a member of the ELI-UNIDROIT working group preparing the text of the European Model Law on Civil Procedure, editor and co-author of leading commentaries on civil procedure and arbitration law published in Hungarian, German and English-speaking countries, a regular speaker at foreign litigation conferences, arbitrator of several foreign and international arbitral tribunals, arbitrator at numerous Hungarian and international arbitration courts, and Hungary’s appointed arbitrator at the Washington DC based International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID, Washington DC). Prof. Dr. Varga has also acted as a representative in a number of cases of major importance before Hungarian courts including the Constitutional Court and the Court of Justice of the European Union. Prof. Dr. Varga holds a Habilitation degree from ELTE Faculty of Law (2010), a PhD in law from Universität des Saarlandes (2005), a diploma in law from ELTE Faculty of Law (1997) and a degree in German linguistics and literature from ELTE Faculty of Arts (1997).

Stefaan Voet is a Professor of Civil Procedure at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven) in Belgium and a host professor at the University of Hasselt. Stefaan studied law at Ghent University (2001), and in 2011 wrote his PhD thesis about complex litigation in Belgium, for which he received the Triannual Price of Civil Procedure awarded in 2014 by the vzw Algemene Modellenverzameling voor de Rechtspraktijk. His publications include C Hodges and S Voet, Delivering Collective Redress, New Technologies, Hart Publishing 2018 and A Uzelac and S Voet (eds), Class Actions in Europe, Holy Grail or a Wrong Trail?, Springer 2021. Dr. Voet was a visiting scholar at the University of Houston (2009) and Stanford Law School (2014). He was a visiting lecturer/professor at the University of Houston, SMU Dedman School of Law in Dallas, University of Tennessee, Syracuse University, China-EU School of Law in Beijing, University of Pavia, University of Pretoria and EMARF (Escola da Magistratura Regional Federal da 2E Regiao) in Rio de Janeiro. In 2016–2017 he held the TPR (Tijdschrift voor Privaatrecht) Chair at the University of Utrecht (Molengraaff Institute for Private Law). In 2020 he was an external scientific fellow at the (former) Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for International, European and Regulatory Procedural Law.

Dr. Voet is a member of different working groups of the European Law Institute. He was involved in a number of studies for the European Commission, as the author of the 2022 academic report on the 2013 Consumer ADR Directive and as a national reporter for the 2025 Study on Mapping Third Party Litigation Funding in the European Union. Stefaan is also a substitute justice of the peace in Bruges, a member of the board of directors of Ombudsfin (the Belgian Financial Ombudsman) and a practicing lawyer.  In 2025, he was appointed by the Dutch State Secretary of Legal Protection to revise the mediation landscape in the Netherlands.

Contributors

Part One: The European Union
Chapter 1: Christopher Hodges, Magdalena Tulibacka, Herbert Woopen
Chapter 2: Magdalena Tulibacka, Stefaan Voet

Part Two: EU Member States
Austria: Stefan Albiez, Christian Klausegger
Belgium: Emilie De Baere
Bulgaria: Assen Georgiev, Yana Antonova-Kyoseva
Croatia: Alan Uzelac
Cyprus: Evangelia Hadjineophytou
Czech Republic: Robert Pavlů, Jiří Rahm
Denmark: Søren Henriksen, Benedikte Westergren Hendel
Estonia: Carri Ginter, Elisabeth Liiv
Finland: Johan Pråhl
France: Maria José Azar-Baud
Germany: Matthias M. Schweiger
Greece: Dimitris Emvalomenos
Hungary: István Varga, István Légrádi
Ireland: Imogen McGrath, Joanelle O’Cleirigh, Kate O’Donohoe
Italy: Stefano Passeri
Latvia: Valts Nerets, Artūrs Kazāks
Lithuania: Rūta Jasilionė, Miroslav Nosevič
Luxembourg: Vincent Richard
Malta: Paul Micallef Grimaud, Philip Formosa, Michela Galea
Netherlands: Daan Beenders, Machteld de Monchy-Jansen
Poland: Agnieszka Trzaska-Śmieszek, Magdalena Tulibacka
Portugal: Frederico Gonçalves Pereira, Joana Neves
Romania: Ioana Hrisafi-Josan 
Slovakia: Richard Macko, Beáta Ramljaková
Slovenia: Aleš Galič, Ana Vlahek
Spain: Alejandro Ferreres Comella
Sweden: Eva Storskrubb, Magdalena Tulibacka

Part Three: The United Kingdom
England & Wales: James Norris-Jones, Julia Kelsoe
Scotland: Joanna Fulton, Pauline McCulloch

Part Four: The EFTA States
Iceland: Eiríkur Elís Þorláksson, Sindri M. Stephensen
Liechtenstein: Alexander Amann, Simone Wetzel
Norway: Maria Astrup Hjort
Switzerland: Felix Dasser, Benjamin Clément

Part Five: Views in Other Jurisdictions
Australia: Alexandra Rose, Colin Loveday
Brazil: Sérgio Pinheiro Marçal
Canada: Catherine Beagan Flood, Jill M. Lawrie, Laura Dougan
Israel: Israel (Reli) Leshem, Ron Peleg, Noam Gilon
Japan: Akihiro Hironaka
United States: Derek J.T. Adler, Fara Tabatabai

Part Six: Policy Issues
Policy Issues: Christopher Hodges, Herbert Woopen
 

Collective Litigation in Europe: Law and Practice, published by Juris in New York (2025) and edited by Mary E. Bartkus, Magdalena Tulibacka, István Varga and Stefaan Voet, is a valuable and substantive compendium on collective proceedings. Collective litigation has become one of the defining legal - and social - phenomena of current time. It is particularly significant where the vindication of individual interests proves inefficient or inadequate. The contributors take on the challenge of an integrated and comprehensive treatment of 33 legal orders, presenting national regulations, practice and experience across all available forms of collective redress. The book is not limited to the legal systems of the EU Member States; it also discusses solutions in England and Wales, Scotland, and selected non-European jurisdictions -including the United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Japan and Israel. Such breadth places European solutions in a global context and shows the extent to which they draw on the American class action model, and the extent to which they represent a deliberate attempt to craft distinct frameworks rooted in local legal traditions and procedural culture.

The methodology adopted by the editors and authors merits special attention. At the outset, the volume presents the genesis and evolution of collective litigation in Europe and offers an in-depth analysis of Directive 2020/1828 on representative actions. This general part helps to grasp both the sources of current solutions and the limits of EU harmonisation that shape the diversity of national models. The individual chapters provide a thorough analysis of the key institutions and issues: jurisdiction and admissibility of collective claims, standing and the status of qualified entities, the court’s role in case management, choice of law and cross-border disputes, funding mechanisms (including third-party funding), costs and litigation risk, settlement opportunities, and the effects and attributes of judgments, notably res iudicata. This framework makes each chapter not only a study of a specific system but also part of a larger puzzle that enables straightforward comparison across jurisdictions. It allows readers, for example, to set the prevailing opt-in model used in most Member States against the sector-specific opt-out regime in the United Kingdom (limited to competition law cases) and the mixed system in the Netherlands (opt-out for domestic claims and opt-in for foreign claimants); to compare the courts’ role in group certification in Germany and France; or to examine different approaches to regulating third-party funding in Scandinavia and in Central and Eastern Europe.

Despite the entry into force of Directive 2020/1828 on representative actions, the volume makes clear that the European landscape of collective litigation remains highly diverse, while efforts to harmonise solutions at EU level are only laying the groundwork that may, in time, lead to more uniform standards. The chapters devoted to individual jurisdictions reveal the variety of procedural designs, regardless of whether we are dealing with systems of the common-law tradition or with Roman and Germanic legal families. Particularly noteworthy is the analysis not only of black-letter law, but also of the role of judges, the position of consumer organisations, and settlement practice.

Collective Litigation in Europe: Law and Practice is a monograph of exceptional scholarly and practical value. For researchers, it is an indispensable source of comparative insight, allowing common problems and differences between systems to be identified. Practitioners will find a useful guide to solutions adopted in other countries - helpful in conducting cross-border cases and assessing litigation risk. For legislators, the book can serve as an inspiration, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of particular models for the protection of collective interests and the consequences of their implementation. The monograph leaves no doubt that collective litigation is not a single, uniform mechanism, but a set of diverse procedural tools whose full understanding is possible only through in-depth comparative analysis. This book sets a high standard for research on collective redress in Europe and beyond. It will undoubtedly remain a point of reference in the field for years to come.

-  Prof. Tadeusz Zembrzuski, University of Warsaw, Faculty of Law and Administration, Department of Civil Procedure, Poland|zembrzuski@wpia.uw.edu.pl|https://zembrzuski.eu/en/about-me/

Collective Litigation in Europe: Law and Practice presents the first comprehensive analysis of collective redress mechanisms across European jurisdictions following the implementation of the EU Representative Actions Directive, featuring detailed and hands-on country reports authored by experienced practitioners. The volume is anchored by a well-structured introduction that articulates in a balanced approach the underlying legal policy issues and traces the evolution of EU legislation in a helpful chronological manner. It concludes with a holistic reflection on the future direction of collective redress in Europe. This work constitutes an invaluable resource for academics and legal professionals engaged in cross-border litigation and policy development.

- Dr. Lorenz Ködderitzsch, LL.M., Assistant General Counsel, Johnson & Johnson