ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the ways in which EC and national consumer law can be made available to Europe's citizens – in other words the access to justice question. This may be achieved by individuals or groups of consumers seeking redress or it may take the form of regulatory control. Relying on individual redress mechanisms to ensure consumer protection is problematic, even in the domestic context. As individual consumers frequently lack the motivation and/or means to bring cases to courts or other dispute resolution fora, the regulation of the marketplace is often left to public officials. Discussion of the access to justice question at the EC level has, however, focused more on ways of resolving cross-border disputes than with introducing general reforms. There is at present very little EC law on the access to justice question outside the realm of private international law. The Access to Justice Green Paper seemed largely to avoid proposing practical ways of resolving individual cross-border disputes.
