Harmonised Guidelines on European Small Claims Procedure: Deliverable 4.1

The Small Claims Analysis Net - SCAN Project was created in order to ensure the efficient implementation of the European Regulation No. 861/2007, as amended by the Regulation 2015/2421, introducing the European Small Claims Procedure (hereinafter ESCP) framework. The main goal of this Regulation is to safeguard the right to have access to justice for consumers and SMEs in civil and commercial cross-border5 small claims (currently up to 5,000 euros) through a more expedited, simplified and cost-efficient procedure. Despite of this, the ESCP is not widely used which is mainly due to the lack of awareness about the procedure. The main reason for such lack of knowledge refers to the fact that either consumers are rarely introduced to the ESCP mechanism or they are unable to obtain accurate information about this Procedure and seek legal aid in this regard. Although, the ESCP is intended to function as a simplified procedural instrument, however, there are still some issues in using this Procedure such as language, cost related and enforcement obstacles that hamper the effective application of this Regulation. These issues are mainly deriving from the vast
diversity in the Member States’ national laws and the lack of harmonization in this aspect. Accordingly, due to these significant issues, the SCAN project aims to analyse the implementation of this Regulation in the Member States as well as disseminating the knowledge of the European Small Claims Procedure among consumers to raise their awareness concerning this procedural tool. Besides being focused on disseminating information about the ESCP among consumers, this project also evaluates the level of awareness among the practitioners who dealt or deal with the ESCP in some way. The consumer associations (due to their significant role in guiding and supporting consumers in being informed about their rights) about the Small Claims Procedure have been also taken into consideration within this project. To this end, the SCAN Consortium conducted interviews on the use and application of the ESCP among various categories of Stakeholders, including judges, lawyers, academics and experts who provide legal advice; EU citizens/consumers/entrepreneurs; and representatives of consumer associations. The data acquired from conducting the interviews enabled the Consortium to identify the best practices for the implementation of the ESCP in the partners’ jurisdictions. The primary objective of the Consortium behind determining the best practices was to gather data on the better solutions adopted by the Member States in order to increase the efficiency of the ESCP Regulation, boosting protection of consumers and creditors in low-value cross-border disputes – with a fixed threshold – and address problematic issues that hinder or discourage consumer access to the ESCP. Having identified national best practices from the SCAN Project partners, a database of national guidelines has been created. At the present stage of the Project, the guidelines identified by the partners at national level are being harmonised, in order to implement two categories of guidelines: one addressed to Policymakers, with the aim of suggesting possible changes to the current legislation; the other addressed to Judicial Authorities and Users, with the aim of allowing greater knowledge of the
ESCP and to facilitate and increase its application.