In April 2013, the European Council adopted a Directive on Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) and a Regulation on Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) that, together, should offer all EU consumers equal access to consumer redress in all types of consumer disputes (excluding health and education sectors). The aim of the new legislation is to ensure that consumers have a fast and cost-effective means of resolving, without going to court, all kinds of disputes—contractual, domestic or cross-border—that they have with traders.
According to the ADR directive, participation of traders in ADR procedure is not required to be mandatory or the outcome of such procedures to be binding on traders. However, the ADR Directive is without prejudice to any national rules mandating, incentivizing or making subject to sanctions the participation of traders in ADR procedures or making their outcomes binding on traders. In Finland, available ADR schemes include, inter alia, the Consumer Disputes Board (Kuluttajariitalautakunta), the Finnish Insurance Complaints Board (Vakuutuslautakunta), the Finnish Banking Complaints Board, (Pankkilautakunta) and the Finnish Securities Complaints Board (Arvopaperilautakunta). The decisions of these boards are recommendatory only but, in general, have been well complied with by traders.
The ADR entities will have to meet certain quality requirements specified in Chapter II of the ADR Directive. The quality requirements should ensure that consumer enjoy the same rights and level of protection in both domestic and cross-border disputes and should guarantee that the ADR entities operate in an effective, fair, independent and transparent way. Traders who commit or are obliged to use ADR to resolve disputes with consumers shall inform consumers about the possibility of ADR and the applicable ADR entity, e.g. on their websites and in their general terms and conditions.
Furthermore, an EU-wide online dispute resolution platform will be established according to the ODR Regulation for disputes that arise from online transactions. The platform will link all the national ADR entities and operate in all official EU languages free of charge. This will simplify the dispute resolution proceedings particularly when the parties live in different member states and speak different languages. A consumer will be able to submit a complaint online through the ODR platform. The ODR platform will notify the trader of the complaint. After the consumer and the trader have agreed on which ADR entity to use, the ODR platform will provide the ADR entity with details of the dispute.
The new legislation is expected to speed up the resolution of disputes. The ODR platform will enable ADR entities to conduct proceedings online. The proceedings should be concluded expeditiously within 90 calendar days. However, in certain exceptional cases, the ADR entities will be able to extend the timeframe, e.g. for disputes of highly complex nature. The parties should be informed of an extension and of the expected approximate length of time needed to conclude the dispute.
Member States will have two years to implement the ADR Directive and ODR Regulation. The ODR platform will become operational six (6) months after the end of the implementation period, i.e. the ODR platform should be operational at the end of 2015.
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