The bill, which is a transposition of an EU directive, offers consumers who have been wronged by a company or business the chance to launch class action law suits in Luxembourg. The bill also permit both parties to reach an out-of-court settlement. Its main goal is to simplify access to justice for consumers and avoid a clogging up of courts. 

In a public statement published this week, the business lobby group said that while it did not oppose consumer protection, the scope of the bill was too broad.

The bill “consists in ultimately encompassing any dispute between a consumer and a professional,” and the professional chamber recommends limiting the scope of the bill to breaches of the provisions of the Consumer Code “or at the very least adopting a restrictive list of the provisions for which a breach on the part of the professional may give rise to the introduction of a class action.”

The professional chamber also takes issue with the principle of introducing moral and bodily injuries, which it says are “inherently unsuitable for the class action mechanism  […] in particular because of the lengthening and increased complexity of the procedures this would entail.”

Finally, it opposes the public naming of the defendant when a judge deems a class action is eligible, which is the first stage of the procedure. “No publication should be ordered before the very principle of the professional’s liability has been established by a final court decision, in order to preserve the reputation of the professionals concerned by such an action,” it wrote.