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IStock / City Presse
Faced with large companies, consumers often feel powerless.
Group action therefore intended to bring professionals in line by encouraging them to adopt practices that were much more respectful of users' rights.
But if the American
“class action”
have for several years bent the giants of the market, the group action imagined by the Hamon law in 2014 is far from obtaining such a result.
High hopes
This collective procedure allows consumers who are victims of the same prejudice from a professional to come together to merge their business, and therefore to defend themselves with a single file.
In order to avoid any opportunism, the action must be carried out by one of the fifteen associations approved by the State, which also bears all the costs of the proceedings.
If it succeeds, the leading judgment will then allow all other people in the same situation to assert their right to compensation without having to go to court.
Initially confined to consumption, group action has since been extended to health products, discrimination suffered at work, the protection of personal data and the environment.
However, according to the information report published by the National Assembly in June 2020, there are only 21 group actions in six years, knowing that none has yet been definitively decided by the courts.
Only amicable agreements have so far enabled victims to be compensated.
A path strewn with pitfalls
For Me Anne-Laure-Hélène des Ylouses, elected to the National Bar Council, “the fundamental hiatus lies in the fact that the law has entrusted the initiative of this procedure to associations which are not intended to carry out countless lawsuits very costly in time and money ”.
But in the opinion of Raphaël Bartlomé, the head of the legal department of UFC-Que Choisir, it is not a problem of means, but of procedural brakes: it is "difficult to bring together sufficiently homogeneous files to be eligible ”,“ the legal procedure is very long ”and the applicants come up against a certain“ reluctance of the courts to deal with a new matter ”.
Even more, the associative expert considers that “the group action was cut, from the start, of part of its object since in consumer law, it only allows compensation for economic damage, in excluding all others (morale, aesthetics, reputation…) ”.
And to cite the example of motorists who were victims of the "dieselgate" affair, whose compensation is well under way in Germany while it is very complicated in France, since it would not only be necessary to prove that this deception had an economic impact for the owners of the vehicles concerned, but also be able to quantify it.
If the explanations differ, the finding of failure is in any case a consensus.
“The fear of heavy penalties should discipline professionals and encourage them to be much more vigilant and respectful of consumers' rights.
Unfortunately, the risk remains largely theoretical and therefore not very dissuasive ”, concludes Me des Ylouses.
While the UFC-Que Choisir already has five group actions in progress, the association intends to file new ones very soon, in order to test the device in all possible areas.
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A reform to come?
Associations and lawyers are waiting for the group action to be reformed.
The European institutions agreed on June 22, 2020 on a collective action project on cross-border disputes (bringing together victims from several countries).
However, this legislation, which has yet to be approved, offers a favorable timetable for reforms in the Member States.
The report of the National Assembly thus invites the French legislator to seize this opportunity to set up a "universal collective action" open to any association having at least two years of seniority, making it possible to compensate all the damages and which would be dealt with by specialized courts.
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