As a founding member of the Global justice Network (GJN), our law firm participated in the GJN Spring Conference which was held in Madrid on May 26-28 , 2016. It was a very successful event where over 40 participants took part in,essentially  focusing on the Volkswagen collective claims issue. Two out of our three US partner law firms were retained from the US Judge for representing concerned American VW owners in class action. In Europe where unfortunately such legal tool does not exist claiming the consumer's rights is more difficult and in any case fairly complicated.This difference in our legal systems could well be behind the motivation of the giant German manufacturer to announce that it intends to indemnify American concerned VW owners but not the European ones. Nevertheless the plaintiff law firms members of the GJN with a solid proven record on such issues have pioneered the way of attempting to protect European consumers through an interesting legal possibility that exists only in the Netherlands where we also have a major law firm as a founding partner and have established along with the other members of our network a stichting (foundation) under the acronym CLEAN so as to participate in a collective claim, for and on behalf of European concerned VW owners who were affected by the fraud. So much is to be seen within the forthcoming months during which all concerned European consumers are invited to join the action without any obligation of their part.

In addition to the VW diesel issue , the event offered workshops on financial litigation, human rights and pharmaceutical and medical devices. ELC's partner Constantin Kokkinos who is honored to be part of GJN's executive committee intervened on several topics during that conference on the VW Diesel issue as well as on cross border financial litigation matters.