In a series of short videos, our EU product liability experts provide insights into the upcoming changes to the EU Product Liability Directive. The new regime will be a gamechanger for product liability disputes and facilitate actions against manufacturers, distributors, importers and other market players ..read more

The European Parliament and the Council are about to adopt a new Right to Repair Directive as part of the EU’s circular economy action plan. The new directive will impose several new obligations on sellers, manufacturers and repairers of goods to which they need to adapt their business practices ..read more

The EU institutions reached a political compromise on the right to repair initiative at the end of last week, thereby setting another milestone for the circular economy. Even if not all proposals by the Commission, the Parliament and the Council were approved in the trilogue negotiations, the new directive will impose a number of new obligations on sellers, manufacturers and repairers of goods to which they need to adapt their business practices ..read more

Almost four decades after its adoption, the EU Product Liability Directive is being completely revised. The reform was prompted by the challenges that technological progress posed to the Directive’s decades-old definitions and concepts, but it ultimately led to a fundamental reform of EU product liability law as a whole ..read more

The EU Parliament and the Council reached a political agreement on the revision of Product Liability Directive. From the point of view of potential defendants, the amendments – including an extension of the scope of covered economic actors and products, new rules on a reduced standard for the burden of proof as well as on disclosure and longer expiry periods – are likely to change the current liability landscape significantly. They should thus prepare carefully for the new, claimant-friendly product liability regime ..read more

The EU Parliament and the Council each adopted their negotiating positions on the right to repair initiative this week. Both institutions call for changes to the Commission's proposal, but in different ways. Although the upcoming trilogue negotiations thus promise to be complicated, the new provisions are likely to be adopted during this legislative period. Irrespective of their final version and their transposition into national law, the new rules will impose new obligations on companies involved in the production, sale or repair of goods ..read more

On 2 August 2023, the Department for Business and Trade and the Office for Product Safety and Standards (“OPSS”) launched a consultation into the UK’s product safety regime titled “Smarter Regulation: UK Product Safety Review”. The consultation focusses on assessing whether the UK product safety framework needs to be modernised in light of emerging technologies and modern supply chains. There is much expectation (and speculation) about where the regime may go especially post-Brexit and against the backdrop of the currently ongoing reform of the EU’s product liability regime following introduct ..read more

Last week, the European Parliament gave its green light for the trilogue negotiations to start with respect to the revision of the Product Liability Directive. The goal is to arrive at a political agreement with the European Council on a final legislative text in the coming months, with a potential formal adoption by the European Parliament and the European Council in the first quarter of 2024. In its current form, the revised Directive will drastically alter the EU product liability regime, making it more suitable to the 21st century economy but also significantly more claimant-friendly ..read more

Parallel court proceedings in mass actions remain very common in Germany but pose great challenges to the judiciary and the parties. The Government therefore proposes to introduce a so-called preliminary ruling procedure at the Federal Supreme Court, aimed at enabling an early decision on fundamental legal questions that arise in a large number of parallel proceedings ..read more

The German Bundestag eventually adopted a bill to implement the EU Collective Redress Directive. Following controversial debates in expert hearings and the public, the Bundestag made important changes to the Government’s draft. While the implementation act still needs to pass the Bundesrat in autumn before coming into force, the main pillars for collective redress actions now appear to be in place and the new regime will be far more consumer-friendly than initially envisaged ..read more