A percentage from collective actions' awards will be allocated to consumer organisations which will become freed from territorial restrictions so that to be activated throughout Greece establishing branch offices and also being able to form unions, ie. second level organisations. All these new regulations are provided in a new bill currently drafted by the Ministry of Development (the competent Ministry for consumer affairs in general) to be brought to the Parliament soon.
In particular:
a) The 70 approx. consumer organisations currently existing throughout Greece are being limited regarding their activities to the specific Prefecture where their seat is located thus seriously restricted in terms of effectiveness; the new draft law will abolish such territorial restriction allowing consumer organisations to promote their members' interests within the whole Greek territory through branches, provided however they will meet certain specified criteria (such as bookkeeping procedures, election of their Board members under the supervision of a judicial representative, minimum number of active members, etc).
b) It is now proposed that a percentage (10% - 20%) of the monetary awards (namely, moral harm compensation) adjudicated out of the collective actions pursued by consumer organisations under the current legal regime (article 10, law 2251/1994, as in force) is allocated to them, an apparent means of (serious) motive for lodging more such actions; per today's status, the Minister of Development may distribute to consumer organisations certain sums out of same source by a decision, however this mechanism has not been yet activated whereas only one consumer organisation (EKPOIZO) has been actually active in judicial actions until today. It is believed that the subsidies currently made to consumer organisations by Ministry of Development are definitely not sufficient source of income to allow them exist and pursue their scope.
According to current drafting and press releases, the expected new law will at same time incorporate EU Directive on unfair commercial practices (Directive 2005/29/EC of 11 May 2005).
