ELI Council Adopts a Project Aimed at Amending the Product Liability Directive

25.02.2022

At its meeting of 25 February 2022, the ELI Council voted to adopt a project aimed at proposing reforms to Council Directive 85/374/EEC of 25 July 1985.

The project will be conducted by the same team – led by Bernhard A Koch – that drafted ELI’s Response to the European Commission’s ‘Public Consultation on Civil Liability – Adapting Liability Rules to the Digital Age and Artificial Intelligence’, Professors Jean-Sébastien Borghetti, Piotr Machnikowski, Pascal Pichonnaz, Teresa Rodríguez de las Heras Ballell, Christian Twigg-Flesner and Christiane Wendehorst.

Under the current project, however, Professors Bernhard A Koch and Jean-Sébastien Borghetti will take on the roles of Reporters, while Professor Christiane Wendehorst will assume the role of Chair.

Several practitioners and stakeholders will advise the team which aims at improving the current wording of the 1985 Directive to make it adequate for current challenges, including (but not limited to) challenges brought about by the digital age. In doing so, they will strive for an adequate distribution of risks between manufacturers and developers on the one hand and victims of defective products on the other.

Further information is available here.