The European Small Claims Procedure: Implementation and Enforcement Revisited in Italy and Belgium

This paper explores the European Small Claims Pro-cedure Regulation (EC) No 861/2007 (as amended by the Regulation (EU) 2015/2421) as one of the most significant recent efforts of the EU Commis-sion to harmonise civil procedure laws within the Union, with a specific focus on the Italian and Bel-gian practice of this Procedure. This study seeks to suggest that the European Small Claims Procedure has the potential to provide consumers with an efficient and facilitated enforcement of their rights by enabling citizens to seek justice through a simpli-fied and speedy cross-border procedural redress mechanism. Therefore, the current study not only identifies the main characteristics of the European Small Claims Procedure but also reviews the na-tional implementation of this Procedure in Italy and Belgium with the aim of assessing the implementa-tion of this regulatory tool in these two jurisdic-tions. This paper first reviews the scope of applica-tion of the European Small Claims Procedure, fol-lowed by a discussion of the jurisdiction and appli-cable laws in these two Member States. Next, the Procedure of EU Small Claims in the national courts of Italy and Belgium that leads to the delivery of a judgement is analysed. The availability of appeal and the recognition and enforcement of judge-ments in the Small Claims Procedure are according-ly explored. Finally, this paper discusses the estab-lishment and objectives of the Small Claims Analysis Net (SCAN) project in raising awareness of this Pro-cedure among EU citizens and stakeholders as well as analysing the application of this Procedure in the EU Member States.
Keywords: Small Claims, Cross-border disputes, National Implementation, SCAN Project.