The story of collective redress in the European Union up to the present day may be qualified as a story of missed opportunities and small steps forward. This is due to an overly cautious approach to the topic at the European and national levels, a fear of American-style class actions and lobbying against the introduction of such mechanisms by those who might become subject to them as defendant parties. As a result, many of the collective redress mechanisms introduced so far in the various EU Member States may rightly be qualified as 'Squeaking Mice'. This appears not only from the contributions to the present volume, but also from the considerable number of studies that have been published on collective redress mechanisms in Europe during the last few years. The editors of the present volume hope that the future of collective redress in Europe will be brighter than the past. They hope that the volume will further the discussion on collective redress in Europe by providing the most up-to-date information in the field, and that this will lead to the implementation of effective collective redress mechanisms in the various EU Member States, mechanisms that cannot be qualified as stillborn, as is the case with many of the reforms that until now have been introduced in most European Union Member States.

A book series devoted to the common foundations of the European legal systems. The Ius Commune Europaeum series includes comparative legal studies as well as studies on the effect of treaties within national legal systems. All areas of the law are covered. The books are published in various European languages under the auspices of METRO, the Institute for Transnational Legal Research at Maastricht University. This book discusses the impact of EU law on selected national legal systems. The authors analyse how the civil procedure system of their country has reacted to increasing Europeanisation and influence of EU law. They identify significant changes and disseminate the reasons for particular developments and the further implications of EU law on the civil procedure.Europe is in a period of increasing Europeanisation of civil procedure. Procedural elements of EU law are based on decentralised enforcement, leaving enforcement and procedural issues to the Member States. Consequently, there is vast amount of EU case law that is relevant for national procedural law. The supremacy of EU law and, inter alia, the requirements of effectiveness and equivalence may be relevant for several topics of national civil procedural law, for example ex officio application of EU law, enforcement, insolvency proceedings, evidence, etc. Both EU legislation and doctrinal changes in EU case law touch upon various topics of the procedural law of the Member States. In a concluding chapter, a more comprehensive comparison between the countries represented in the book is made. Which doctrines, which pieces of legislation or features in legislation pose problems for national civil procedure? Are some legal systems or topics more prone to integrate European rules, and are others more resistant to changes? This book displays the Europeanisation of national civil procedure law and helps to understand this development from the perspective of Member States.