The enforcement of consumer law has traditionally been based primarily on private enforcement, complemented by administrative enforcement. Because of longstanding issues of non-compliance with EU consumer rights, the Commission has introduced an ‘EU representative action’. In this tenth and final post in RENFORCE Blog’s special series on the enforcement of EU law, Esther van Schagen summarises the main features of the new Directive and explains some of the assumptions as to the effect of more enforcement which underlie the Directive and become visible in the impact assessment. Arguably, the Directive has overlooked opportunities that could have contributed to managing key barriers to bringing collective actions – the complexity, length and costs of collective redress – and which ought to be addressed in order to enhance cross-border enforcement.
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About Esther van Schagen
Esther van Schagen studied private law in Leiden and obtained her doctorate at the University of Tilbug in 2013. She was a post-doctoral researcher for the Endowed Chair of Law and Gvernance at Groningen University and continued on to obtain a prestiguous Newton fellowship (2016-2017) that enabled her to conduct postdoctoral research on better regulation in European contract law at the University of oxford, hosted by Prof. S. Weatherill. Since 2017, Esther is an assistant professor at Untrecht University, teaching private international law, part of the honours programme for the private law master, as well as introduction to private law and the bachelor theses. In her research, Esther focusses on the development of private law in the multilevel legal order, with a specific interest in the design and enforcement of EU consumer law according to the EU Better Regulation Programme. She is also interested in comparative law and has experience in English and German comparative research. Esther is a member of the editorial board of the Tijdschrift voor Consumentenrecht en Handelspraktijken, and has participated in the preparation for the Fitness Check of EU consumer law.