Protecting human rights through collective redress: Melanie Fink at CEU Vienna on damages actions under EU law
On 24 January 2025, a Workshop on ‘Protecting human rights through collective redress’ took place at the Central European University in Vienna. It was organised by Dr Zsolt Körtvélyesi in the framework of a Maria Skłodowska-Curie project on ‘Minority Rights – Towards Effective European Enforcement’.
Under the aspirations of the ruling paradigm, human rights should be readily available to all humans; in most cases, however, implementation requires enforcement, often through costly and time-consuming litigation. The workshop explored some of the questions in the forefront of thinking about more effective enforcement, including in equality law in Europe and climate change litigation globally, with a special focus on collective redress.
Melanie Fink spoke on the action for damages under EU law as a fundamental rights remedy, discussing both its strengths and weaknesses in this respect. The action for damages’ potential lies in its accessibility to individuals as well as its substantive flexibility that leaves significant room for the CJEU to craft a liability regime suitable to the EU. Yet it is currently not very effective as a fundamental rights remedy. This is largely due to two factors: the Court’s insistence on the sufficiently serious breach test and the limits to the establishment and enforcement of joint liability. To ensure full compliance with the right to an effective remedy, the CJEU may rely on Article 47 of the Charter and the approaches adopted in national liability laws to develop a fundamental rights specific regime for damages liability. Alternatively, a fundamental rights specific liability regime may also be achieved through secondary legislation.
The basis for this presentation formed a chapter on the action for damages as a fundamental rights remedy, written together with Clara Rauchegger (University of Innsbruck) and Joyce De Coninck (European University Institute). It was published in 2024 in the book Redressing Fundamental Rights Violations by the EU: The Promise of the ‘Complete System of Remedies' (Cambridge University Press), edited by Melanie Fink and available fully open access here.
The programme of the Workshop can be found here.