Consumption has become in developed societies a massive and widespread phenomenon. Each day millions of people are envoled in processes of hiring goods and services; which very often leads to conflicts of many kinds, both in terms of freedom of choice, product quality, guarantees and security the same as in issues affecting their economic interests, including prices, etc..

Against this background, the protection and defence of consumers and users is an essential need both for reasons of justice as for a healthy and proper functioning of the economic system, wich has consumption one of its pillars. Therefore, justice for consumers, and especially for European consumers, is a prerequisite to enable the single market. There is a single market in motion that affects all Europeans and all consumers but, however, there isn't an effective model of justice to solve problems of consumption, which motivate the citizens' confidence in this great European internal market. While this continues, we can't talk about a market where consumers can trust.

It is true that justice belongs to the scope of issues on which the European Union has less been ale to progress, as the sovereignty and the legal identity of each member state. However, the objetive of a only economically union is unfeasible without a frame built on some common rights that protect citizens and consumers in Europe compared with the problems it brings precisely that market. Indeed, there are often problems that have a special scope qualitatively and quantitatively, particularly in financial services. They are the "collective cases", which can reach thousands, tens of thousands and even millions of citizens. To give some examples, in Spain in recent years there have been cases such as bankruptcies of entities such as securities dealers GESCARTERA AVA, Banks as Eurobank or "financial tramps" as INVESTAHORRO and other cases such as the Academies of English and others entities with payments based on consumer credit, or the case of mass economic fraud to the small shareholders of Terra . Creating a more open market without borders can extend this problem to consumers from several European states, as is already happening with fraud in investment in tangible assets of enterprises as AFINSA affecting consumers in Spain and Portugal.

The dimension of the problem can be seen in all its crudeness if we see that even in these cases so extraordinary collective are appropriate means. These class actions have forced consumers concerned and their associations for the defence to get involved in expensive and complex civil and criminal prosecutions often with an uncertain result because of questions for çwhich these procedures are not intended or inexperienced. The recent European and national legislation on collective