From 21 July to 2 August 2014 four students from the Riga Graduate School of Law - Ieva Zunde (LL.M Legal Linguistics programme), Žaklīne Kraukle (LL.B Law & Business programme), Linda Gagaine and Elīna Andrijevska (LL.B Law & Diplomacy programme) - participated in the International Intensive Course “Consumer Rights in the European Union: Alternative Dispute Resolution and Collective Redress” in Udine, Italy.
The course mainly focused on the rights and protection of the consumer in the international private law, as well as the general principles and freedoms of the consumer in the EU internal market. Specific attention was devoted to the main sources of EU law (Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, the Service Directive 2006/123, and the Directive 93/13 on Unfair Terms in the Consumer Contracts, etc.) and their importance to the consumer.
Secondly, the participants were engaged in discussions concerning substantive and procedural benefits and drawbacks of the consumer collective action in the EU and the U.S.
Thirdly, debates were conducted in order to understand the importance of the ADR mechanisms and evaluate their effectiveness in comparison with the traditional judicial approach. In order to examine theoretical knowledge gained in the framework of the course, the participants had to prepare two moot court cases concerning the discussed topics.