Italy

• Date: 01 March 2009
• Published date: 01 March 2009
• DOI: 10.1177/0002716208328349
• Author: Elisabetta Silvestri
• Subject Matter: Articles

138 ANNALS, AAPSS, 622, March 2009

Italy has specific, sectoral representative procedures

familiar in other European states, especially on con-

sumer protection. Lengthy debate resulted in a general

law being passed in 2007, which was postponed by a

new government in 2008.

Keywords: collective actions; injunctions; damages;

associations; consumer protection

1. Introduction

Italy does not have any form of group litiga-

tion as a general procedural tool for the protec-

tion and the enforcement of rights and interests

shared by a group of individuals equally

affected by the same mass wrong or harm. It is

true that a few “collective actions” (meaning

actions filed by associations, e.g., consumer

associations) exist, but they address specific

legal subjects, that is, they are available only in

well-defined subject matters or to particular

plaintiff groups. Besides, the rules governing

such actions are dispersed and scattered among

different sources of the law, so that to under-

stand exactly how each action operates, one

must assemble spare “pieces” from the civil

code, the code of civil procedure, individual

statutes (dealing, for example, with consumer

protection, securities regulation, and measures

promoting equal opportunity), and regulations

of various kinds.

Scholars have been debating the best way to

accommodate group actions (and most of all

American class actions) to the structure of

Italian judicial procedure for several decades,

but their ideas and recommendations exploring

avenues to provide an efficient pooling of inter-

ests in civil and administrative proceedings

Italy

By

ELISABETTA SILVESTRI

Elisabetta Silvestri is an associate professor of compar-

ative civil procedure, University of Pavia, Italy.

DOI: 10.1177/0002716208328349