European Commission Report on the Product Liability Directive

United Kingdom

The European Commission has now published its latest report on the operation of the Product Liability Directive in Member States.

The Commission has come down in favour of not making any changes to the Directive, and concluded that the existing balance in the Directive of the interests of industry and consumers should not be upset. However it has noted that the courts in different Member States are not always taking consistent approaches to concepts such as burden of proof and defectiveness in the Directive and it intends to study this further.