Opinion of the Advocate General — ECLI:EU:C:2016:15
Date: 2016-01-14
Language of the case: Spanish
Subject matter: Consumer protection;Approximation of laws
Procedure: Reference for a preliminary ruling
Origin: Spain

Summary — Judgment of the Court (First Chamber), 14 April 2016 1. Consumer protection — Unfair terms in consumer contracts — Directive 93/13 — Unfair term within the meaning of Article 3 — Assessment of unfair nature by the national court — Criteria (Council Directive 93/13, Arts 3(1) and 4(1)) 2. Consumer protection — Unfair terms in consumer contracts — Directive 93/13 — Declaration of unfairness of a term — Scope — National law providing for the automatic suspension of an individual action, brought by a consumer, with the same subject matter as a collective action, brought by a consumer protection association, until the conclusion of the collective proceedings — Not permissible — Incompatible with the principle of effectiveness (Council Directive 93/13, Art. 7) 1. See the text of the decision. (see paras 22-24) 2. Article 7 of Directive 93/13 on unfair terms in consumer contracts must be interpreted as precluding a provision of national law which requires a court, before which an individual action has been brought by a consumer seeking a declaration that a contractual term binding him to a seller or supplier is unfair, automatically to suspend such an action pending a final judgment concerning an ongoing collective action brought by a consumer association on the basis of Article 7(2) of Directive 93/13 seeking to prevent the continued use, in contracts of the same type, of terms similar to those at issue in that individual action, without the relevance of such a suspension from the point of view of the protection of the consumer who brought the individual action before the court being able to be taken into consideration and without that consumer being able to decide to dissociate himself from the collective action. Individual and collective actions have, in the context of Directive 93/13, different purposes and legal effects, with the result that the procedural relationship between the respective conduct of each can correspond only to procedural requirements relating, in particular, to the sound administration of justice and to the need to avoid incompatible judicial decisions, without, however, the interaction of those different actions leading to a weakening of consumer protection, as provided for by Directive 93/13. In that context, the need to ensure consistency between judicial decisions cannot justify a lack of effectiveness consisting of the forfeit, on the part of the consumer, of the rights which he would be recognised as having in an individual action following its suspension pending a final judgment concluding the collective action, therefore the difference in nature between judicial control exercised in the context of a collective action and that exercised in the context of an individual action should, in principle, prevent the risk of incompatible judicial decisions. Similarly, as regard the need to avoid overburdening the courts, the effective exercise of subjective rights conferred by Directive 93/13 on consumers cannot be called into question by considerations connected to the organisation of a Member State’s judicial system. (see paras 30, 35, 40-43, operative part)