The Czech Initiative on Class Actions in Environmental Matters: Destined to Fail

This chapter provides a brief introduction to the environmental aspects of the latest Czech initiative, which should introduce a coherent collective redress mechanism. To identify the weaknesses of the Draft Proposal of the Act on Collective Redress, the limits of collective access to the courts are analysed in more detail, covering both civil and administrative judiciary. Furthermore, the available civil actions and regimes of civil liability are explored on the basis of the recent case law of the Czech civil courts. The author concludes that the proposed legislation - if adopted - will introduce several legal instruments that will help to compensate for damage caused by industrial accidents. However, the pitfall of the initiative seems to lie in the legislator’s ignorance of the differences between consumer protection and the environmental protection. It neither attempts to solve the problems in the current legislation, nor does it address the most destructive cases of violation of environmental law that cause mass harm to thousands of individuals.This chapter provides a brief introduction to the environmental aspects of the latest Czech initiative, which should introduce a coherent collective redress mechanism. To identify the weaknesses of the Draft Proposal of the Act on Collective Redress, the limits of collective access to the courts are analysed in more detail, covering both civil and administrative judiciary. Furthermore, the available civil actions and regimes of civil liability are explored on the basis of the recent case law of the Czech civil courts. The author concludes that the proposed legislation - if adopted - will introduce several legal instruments that will help to compensate for damage caused by industrial accidents. However, the pitfall of the initiative seems to lie in the legislator’s ignorance of the differences between consumer protection and the environmental protection. It neither attempts to solve the problems in the current legislation, nor does it address the most destructive cases of violation of environmental law that cause mass harm to thousands of individuals