The emergence of international class actions as the focus of intensive academic debate, the target of legislative proposals, and the exciting subject of new transatlantic case-law, is recent. In continental Europe, it appears to a large extent to be linked to the simultaneous discovery of the procedural tools available in American courts in international disputes, so that analysis of problems linked to transatlantic class actions is often conflated with that of punitive damages or contingency fees—all frequently subject to deep mistrust. (publisher's abstract)