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De Schutter, Olivier --- "Group Litigation Before the European Court of Justice" [2006] ELECD 134; in Smismans, Stijn (ed), "Civil Society and Legitimate European Governance" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006)

Book Title: Civil Society and Legitimate European Governance

Editor(s): Smismans, Stijn

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781843769460

Section: Chapter 5

Section Title: Group Litigation Before the European Court of Justice

Author(s): De Schutter, Olivier

Number of pages: 26

Extract:

5. Group litigation before the European
Court of Justice
Olivier De Schutter

INTRODUCTION

Three different kinds of arguments are traditionally put forward in favour of
`associational' or `organisational' standing, implying the possibility for
organisations to bring judicial proceedings for the safeguard of the values
which they seek to defend. A first argument is based on the idea that certain
illegal acts of the administration, or unconstitutional acts adopted by the
legislator, risk being left unremedied if associations are not recognised a locus
standi in order to seek their judicial review. This is the case, in particular, with
respect to violations which concern large and diffuse interests, which no
individual litigant would otherwise be under an incentive to challenge, or
where no individual litigant may even have standing to sue, in systems where
the admissibility of the action is made conditional upon a demonstration that
the interest is sufficiently `individualized', that is, specific to the individual
applicant rather than common to an open category of persons of which the
litigant is a member. We may call this the `rule of law' rationale for the
recognition of the locus standi of groups. It is this argument which has been
predominant in the areas of environmental law and consumer law, precisely
because of the diffuse character of the interests which these branches of law
seek to protect.1 Here, the objective of recognising associational standing is to
make it possible for organisations to act as `private Attorneys General', to use
the expression made ...