Toegang tot het recht voor de consument/ervaringen met buitengerechtelijke geschillenbeslechting in Nederland

Abstract

One of the most serious problems concerning the law is the fact that not everybody is guaranteed access to it. This is a particulary burning issue in the area of consumer law. In 1982, there took place in Ghent, under the leadership of Professor Marcel STORME, a symposium on access to the law by the European consumer. This sympsosium was not the first to be organised on this topic, and will certainly not be the last. However, it did constitute a turning point in the trend away from merely studying this subject towards the taking of actual initiatives. This trend ultimately culminated in the publication, at the end of 1993, of a Green Paper of the European Commission on access to the law by the consumer. One of the solutions which is proposed in this Green Paper is the establishment of, and support given to, specific disputes committees which should make the law — including consumer law — more accessible. These disputes committees already exist in the Netherlands. In this contribution, an examination is made of these Committees. In the Netherlands, increasing use is being made of the settling of disputes by means of disputes committees established for each sector. This type of dispute settlement has various advantages as well as presenting certain defects. In some cases there is actually no alternative to it: where there is no disputes committee, the consumer will normally refrain from taking this dispute to the ordinary courts. The form assumed by the decision made by the dispute settlement assessors is specific to the Netherlands, i.e. that of the „binding opinion". Apart from this aspect, this pratical system appears to be capable of adoption abroad. Particular attention must be given in this context to the recognition and subsiding of the disputes committees by the authorities, and to the opportunity which this provides for laying down quality standards. On a more general level, this extra-judicial method of dispute settlement appears to be an attractive option in a European context.