A representative group action regime has been implemented in Portugal by Law 83/95, of 31 August, on the right to take part in administrative proceedings and the right of popular action, last amended by Decree-Law 214-G/2015, of 2 October. The legislator gave effect to Article 52 (3) of the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, of 1976, in the version which resulted from the Constitution amendment of 1989. Up until then, the law only entertained the possibility of a popular action of a corrective nature, for the jurisdictional control of certain acts of the Administration, and a popular action of a suppletory nature, which aimed at overcoming the omissions of local public entities in the defence of property and rights of the Administration. The law in force extended popular action to prevention, to the prosecution of offenses and to claims for damages. Besides this, it has changed from simply being a means of controlling the activity of the Administration to also being a means by which individuals can bring actions against the acts or omissions of other individuals.The passing of Law 83/95 provided the civil law with the means of overcoming its proverbial lack of efficacy in compensating harm to diffuse interests or to homogeneous individual interests or rights. Interests protected by the Constitution, such as public health, the environment, quality of life, consumers’ rights, cultural heritage and the public domain [Article 1 (2)] justify the specific nature of the intervention, due to the nature of the protected interests or the lack of proportion between the individual impact of the harm and the collective repercussions of the damage. In this last case, the classic substantive and procedural forms of civil liability prove to be inadequate regarding compensation that only acquires expression when, due to the nature of the characteristics it takes on, it is possible to combine it into a single sum.Private law enforcement should be granted with effective tools for its purposes. This is the case in Portuguese law with an opt-out regime and a judicial order to pay a global compensation. Until recently, mass damages claims in Portugal were rare. However, the situation is gradually evolving
