증권관련 집단소송절차의 개선을 위한 비교법적 고찰

On February 27, 2020, the Korean Supreme Court issued a meaningful judgment on a securities-related class action. This was the first judgment in favor, which became the first case where victims were compensated in accordance with the Securities-Related Class Action Act since its adoption in 2005. However, it took a whopping 10 years for the ruling to be delivered. Securities-Related Class Action Act was expected to play an efficient role in providing a practical relief to small investors and enhancing transparency in corporate management, but class actions have neither been used efficiently as a means of dispute resolution, nor have been able to efficiently provide relief to small investors. In such a situation, the Ministry of Justice posted an advanced notice of a class action bill to repeal the Securities-Related Class Action Act and to extend the new bill's application to all fields, but no progress has been made so far since the regime change in July 2022. Such a situation where discussions are ongoing, without them being reflected in the system, is the same in European countries except for the United States. This paper intends to cover issues raised from ‘the process of adopting class action legislation’ and ‘the process of system development’ in Germany and France, and suggest ways forward for our country to improve class action procedures, from a comparative legal perspective. This paper paid a special attention to what is worth consideration by us among discussions in Germany and France which began from a critical point of view on the class action system in the United States.