The purpose of this master's thesis is to present to the reader the regulation of collective redress for consumers in European Union law. Despite several years of efforts, the European Union has not yet provided adequate protection for the collective interests of consumers. Currently, there is only one binding act in force, namely the Directive on injunctions for the protection of consumers' interests from 2009, which in practice has proved to be ineffective. The Directive allows qualified entities to file collective injunctions on behalf of consumers, which may require them to bring an end to trader infringements in the future. However, it did not introduce a system of compensatory collective redress. Prohibition of future trader infringements does not exhaust the protection of consumers' collective interests, which is why some Member States have set up their systems of collective redress. All this has led to wide differences between Member States' compensatory collective redress systems. Nevertheless, a third of Member States still does not regulate the collective redress system. To harmonize the regulation, the European Commission has published several non-binding acts and working documents, which have had no significant effect on Member States. For this reason, the master's thesis seeks to show the reader, through a chronological overview of the legislative activity of the European Union, the direction of the development of collective redress for consumer protection in the European legal area and at the same time to present the main principles of collective redress. Besides, the master's thesis briefly describes how the Slovenian legislature tackled the problem by adopting the Collective Actions Act in 2017. Finally, the master's thesis could not avoid the presentation of the recent Dieselgate affair, which exposed the shortcomings of the regulation of collective redress in European Union law.
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