HW Legal
These days, as we increasingly shop across borders, many of us end up in an awkward spot. Goods from a German, Italian, or Spanish online shop either never arrive, turn up faulty, or the seller refuses to acknowledge a complaint. We may also run into an airline that cancels a flight and refuses to pay the compensation the law requires, or a hotel in Greece or a car rental firm in Austria that fails to keep to its obligations.
Fortunately, in cross-border consumer disputes like these there is a powerful European tool to help: ECC-Net, known in the Czech Republic as the European Consumer Centre (ESC).
What is the European Consumer Centre (ECC-Net)?
ECC-Net is a Europe-wide network of 29 specialised centres, supported by the European Commission. The Czech centre operates within the Czech Trade Inspection Authority and works with partner centres in every EU member state, as well as in Norway and Iceland.
Its mission is to give consumers free help in resolving disputes with traders from other EU countries. The centre will not only explain your rights to you in detail, it will actively contact the other side and try to settle the dispute out of court. In 2024, ECC-Net helped nearly 134,000 consumers and managed to resolve around 59% of cases successfully.
When the European Consumer Centre isn't enough
Although the ECC gets excellent results in many cases, it has its limits. It can't run court proceedings, represent a client before a foreign court, or carry out enforcement. So in more complex disputes, where larger sums are at stake, where the seller won't communicate, or where the matter has to be enforced through the courts, you'll need to bring in a lawyer who specialises in consumer law as well as private international law.
State-funded legal help for people with limited means
For Czech citizens (or foreign nationals with a specific residence permit) in these situations, there is significant support available, under the Act on Providing Legal Aid in Cross-Border Disputes within the European Union (which implements Directive 2003/8/EC). It allows people without sufficient financial means to obtain legal protection paid for from public funds.
For a Czech consumer, this means in practice that the Czech Ministry of Justice will assess the application and pass it on to the relevant authority in the country where the court proceedings are due to take place (Germany, Italy, Spain, or France, for example). In that country, the client may then be granted legal representation by a lawyer, or have a substantial part of the costs of the proceedings covered, in a dispute against a trader based there.
Want to resolve your cross-border dispute effectively?
Get in touch with our law firm. As specialists in cross-border consumer law and enforcement within the EU, we will give you a qualified assessment of your case and propose the most suitable strategy.
The first consultation is free and without obligation.