Two more qualified entities on consumer-action list
The Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment has designated two more organisations as ‘qualified entities’ (QEs) under consumer-rights legislation enacted in 2023.
Euroconsum and WhizzBang are the fourth and fifth QEs, after previous similar designations for the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, Noyb-European Centre for Digital Rights, and Digital Rights Ireland.
The minister designates QEs under the Representative Actions for the Protection of the Collective Interests of Consumers Act 2023.
Under the act, only designated QEs can bring representative actions on behalf of groups of consumers for infringements of certain consumer-protection laws.
Domestic actions
Lawyers at Matheson point out that, according to the European Commission’s list of cross-border QEs, neither Euroconsum nor WhizzBang have been designated as cross-border QEs.
As a result, they add, neither are currently able to take cross-border consumer-representative actions elsewhere in the EU and will be able to bring only domestic actions.
Euroconsum is a German consumer organisation based in Frankfurt, with areas of interest that include data protection, the health-and-wellness market, and dynamic-pricing practices.
‘Broader mandate’
“Notably, Euroconsum appears to maintain a broader consumer-protection mandate than the previous Irish-designated QEs, which to date have focused predominantly on digital and data rights,” Matheson notes.
“This wider remit may potentially result in consumer-representative actions in areas beyond data protection,” the firm adds.
WhizzBang is a pan-European non-governmental organisation that campaigns for the interests of consumers in the EU, with a particular focus on individuals who reside in an EU member state in which they did not grow up.
The network offers individual advice and support, conducts research, and publishes reports on the challenges facing expats as consumers, as well as engaging in lobbying before EU institutions for legislative change.
Matheson’s lawyers note that, as QEs are required to be non-profit in nature, the current restrictions on third-party litigation funding in Ireland have been cited by some commentators as a potential barrier to the ability of any QE to pursue a representative action in the State.
To date, only one such action has started under the 2023 act in Ireland.