Originally from Collective Litigation in Europe: Law and Practice – Preview Page

As is typical for a civil law jurisdiction, Austrian law is primarily statutory law. While the Jurisdiktionsnorm (Jurisdiction Act [JA]) determines the organization and jurisdiction of courts, the Zivilprozessordnung (Code of Civil Procedure [CCP]) describes the course of contentious proceedings in civil courts. Until recently Austrian procedural law did not provide for specific rules for collective actions, but only contained various generally applicable procedural tools permitting multiple parties on either side. These procedural instruments, which are still in force, allow that multiple claims are dealt with in a single lawsuit, but they were clearly not designed to handle large class-actions.  
Acknowledging the difficulties an individual claimant may encounter in specific cases, the Austrian legislature has vested certain associations with the power to file for injunctive relief or to seek declaratory judgments in the public interest (see section C.2. below). If the individual claim in question is assigned to them, these associations are also authorized to bring test cases which may be appealed at all jurisdictional levels independently of monetary restrictions that may otherwise apply (see section C.1. below). Through the assignment of claims, it has further become established practice in Austria to concentrate multiple individual claims in one and the same lawsuit (“Class-Action Austrian-Style;” see section C.3. below). Apart from that, judges can, under specific preconditions, simply combine similar cases (see section B.1. below), while third parties may accede to proceedings as intervener (see section B.2. below).