Consumer Law

► Full Reference : S. Piédelièvre, Droit commercial (Actes de commerce – Commerçants – Fonds de commerce – Concurrence – Consommation) (Commercial Law: Commercial Acts – Traders – Business Assets – Competition – Consumer Affairs), 1st ed. 1997 – 14th ed., 2024, Dalloz, “Cours Dalloz-Série Droit privé” Series, 480 p. - ► General presentation of the book (written in French) : This book, intended mainly for second- and third-year undergraduate students, offers a clear and detailed approach to the notion of commerciality. It will also be of interest to practitioners wishing to update their knowledge of commercial law. Complex in the French system, this notion raises many questions calling for concrete solutions of great importance, such as the rules on jurisdiction and evidence. The book approaches commercial law through commercial acts, traders, business assets, as well as competition and consumer affairs. The author has set out to present the rules that constitute the principles of commercial activity. - 📕Read the back cover (in French) - 📕Read the table of contents (in French) - 📚See the entire collection in which the book is published. -

► Full Reference : J.-D. Pellier, Droit de la consommation (Consumer Law), 4th ed., 2024, Lefebvre-Dalloz, “Cours Dalloz-Série Droit privé” Series, 512 p. - ► General presentation of the book (written in French) : We experience Consumer Law every day. It also expresses a new way of conceiving civil law, commercial law, criminal law and public law. These are many reasons to learn and understand « Consumer Law » thanks to this clear and up-to-date textbook. The book first describes the « contractual » rules of consumer law, whether drawn from the general law or from the special law of consumption, then devotes a second part to the procedural rules of the subject, so abundant are the disputes in this field, whether collective or individual. The texts and specific solutions are rooted in commercial law and competition law as well as in criminal law, consumer law developing more and more at the level of European Union Law. The book restores the unity of the subject out of this diversity, for it is always the protection of consumers that is at stake. - 📕Read the back cover (in French) - 📕Read the table of contents (in French) - 📚See the entire collection in which the book is published. -

► Full Reference: Deffains, B., Compliance and International Competitiveness, in Frison-Roche, M.-A. (ed.), Compliance Monumental Goals, series "Régulations & Compliance", Journal of Regulation & Compliance (JoRC) and Bruylant, to be published. - ► Article Summary: Compliance, which can be defined first and foremost as obedience to the law, is an issue for the company in that it can choose as a strategy to do or not to do it, depending on what such a choice costs or brings in. This same choice of understanding is offered to the author of the norm, the legislator or the judge, or even the entire legal system, in that it makes regulation more or less costly, and compliance with it, for companies. Thus, when the so-called “Vigilance” law was adopted in 2017, the French Parliament was criticized for dealing a blow to the “international competitiveness” of French companies. Today, it is on its model that the European Parliament is asking the European Commission to design what could be a European Directive. The extraterritoriality attached to the Compliance Law, often presented as an economic aggression, is however a consubstantial effect, to its will to claim to protect beyond the borders. This brings us back to a classic question in Economics: what is the price of virtue? In order to fuel a debate that began several centuries ago, it is first of all on the side of the stakes that the analysis must be carried out. Indeed, the Law of Compliance, which is not only situated in Ex Ante, to prevent, detect, remedy, reorganize the future, but also claims to face more “monumental” difficulties than the classical Law. And it is specifically by examining the new instruments that the Law has put in place and offered or imposed on companies that the question of international competitiveness must be examined. The mechanisms of information, secrecy, accountability or responsibility, which have a great effect on the international competitiveness of companies and systems, are being changed and the measure of this is not yet taken. - 📘  lire la présentation générale du livre, Compliance Monumental Goals, dans  lequel cet article est publié -

►  Money Laundering, Cryptocurrency and the Art of Saying It: the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) statement of June 3, 2021 and the Art of Saying It. Law is softer than ever.   The English have their way of saying things: thus the Financial Conduct Authority -FCA, the British financial market regulator, published on June 3, 2021 a press release whose expression is remarkable. Its subject matter is crypto-assets and, like in an essay plan à la française, it is built in two parts.  In the part I, it is just mentioned that the deadline for companies in this industry to obtain a registration, which was due to end soon, will be postponed to March 2022. Why? Because almost all of them have not been able to demonstrate their ability not to be resistant to money laundering and other criminal activities. This is in no way presented as a conviction, just the objective cause of a postponement of the date, the time for the Financial Regulatory Authority to better examine the files, themselves to be completed by applicants. The part II concerns consumer protection. The Authority point out that the consumer can lose everything in an extremely risky products and underlines that it is unlikely that this ruined layman will even be able to access the ombudsman to obtain anything. It is purely informative. This is how the English bodies formulate their opinion on cryptoasset. It's elegant (the press is more direct). This also makes it possible not to be covered with insults by the worshipers of these objects: are expressed just a technical delay granted and not a conviction that cryptoasset could be per se  an instrument of criminality, just a probationary difficulty ; and just a regret on the non-access to the ombudsman for these cryptoassets consumers. But if the evolution of the bubble leads these investors to ruine shows, the Regulator will have warned and expressed in advance the regrets he had of the lack of legal technique to protect them. And if the facts show that it is massively through cryptocurrency that the crime is whitewashed, the Regulator has shown everyone his prudence, the delay it will have take to examine the files  and its kind foresight. No one more than a British knows what Liability is.    -        

Full reference: Directive (EU) 2020/1828 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 November 2020 on representative actions for the protection of the collective interests of consumers and repealing Directive 2009/22/EC Read the directive

Full reference: CJEU, 1st chamber, 18th of November 2020, decision C‑519/19, Ryanair DAC vs DelayFix Read the decision   Summary of the decision This decision of the CJEU of 18th of November 2020 is about the jurisdiction clause for any dispute in air transport contracts, here those of Ryanair. This decision is especially interesting about the question to know whether the professional assignee (collection company) of a debt whose holder was a consumer may or may not avail itself of the consumer protection provisions, canceling the scope of this type of clause.  The Court takes back the criteria and the solution already used in 2019 about a credit contract: the protection applies by the criterion of the parties to the contract and not of the parties to the disputes. Such a clause is effective only if the integrality of the contract is transferred to the professional, and not only some of the stipulations. This Regulatory decision, through "private enforcement", incentivizes consumers to transfer their compensation claim (around 250 euros) to collection companies which, in turn, discipline airlines to stay on schedule.

Full reference: Frison-Roche, M.-A., From Competition Law to Compliance Law: example of French Competition Authority decision on central purchasing body in Mass Distribution, Newsletter MAFR – Law, Compliance, Regulation, 27th of October 2020 Read by freely subscribing the other news of the Newsletter MAFR – Law, Compliance     -   Summary of the news: Through its decision of 22nd of October 2020, the Autorité de la concurrence (French Competition Authority) accepted the commitments proposed by retail sector's firms Casino, Auchan, Metro and Schiever so that their agreement by which a common body centralizes purchases from numerous retailers, allowing each to offer these products under private label, is admissible with regard to competitive requirements.  In this particular case, the Authority had self-sized in July 2018, estimating that such a purchase center could harm competition, opening immediately a large consultation on the terms of the contract. In October 2018, the law Egalim permitted to the Authority to take temporary measures to suspend such a contract, what the Authority did from September.  The convention parties' firms committed on the one hand to update their contract limiting the power on suppliers, especially small and very small suppliers, excluding totally of the field of the contract some kind of products, especially food products and reducing the share of bought products volume dedicated to their transformation in distributor brand.  The Autorité de la concurrence accepts this proposal of commitments, congratulates itself of the protection of small suppliers operating like that and observe the similarity with the contract consisting in a purchase center between Carrefour and Tesco, which will be examined soon.  -   We can draw three lessons of this innovating decision, which could be a model for after:  1. The technique of Compliance Law permits to the Autorité de la concurrence to find a reasonable solution for the future.  Indeed, rather than punishing much later by a simple fine or to annihilate the performing mechanism of the purchase center, the Authority obtains contract modifications.  The contract is structured and the obtained modifications are also structural.  The commitments are an Ex Ante technique, imposed to operators, for the future, in an equilibrium between competition, operators and consumers protection and the efficacy of the coordination between powerful operators.  The nomination of a monitor permits to build the future of the sector, thanks to the Ex Ante nature of Compliance Law.  2. The retail sector finally regulated by Compliance technics. "Distribution law" always struggle to find its place, between Competition law and Contract Law, especially because we cannot consider it as a common "sector".  The Conseil constitutionnel (French constitutional court) refused a structural injunction power to the authority because it was contrary to business freedom and without any doubt ethics of business is not sufficient to the equilibrium of the sector. Through commitments given against a stop of pursuits relying on structuring contracts, it is by Compliance law that a Regulation law free of the condition of existence of a sector could leave. 3. The political nature of Compliance law in the retail sector As for digital space, which is not a sector, Compliance law can directly impose to actors imperatives that are strangers to them.  In the digital space, the care for fighting against Hate and for protecting private life; here the care for small and very small suppliers.    -   See in counterpoints the pursuit of a contentious procedure against Sony, whose the proposals of commitments, made after a public consultation, were not found satisfying. To go further, on the question of Compliance law permitting through indirect way the rewriting by the Conseil of a structuring contract (linking a platform created by the State to centralize health data with an American firm subsidy to manage them).

General reference :  Anders, G., L'Obsolescence de l'homme. Sur l'âme à l'époque de la deuxième révolution industrielle, Traduction de l'allemand par Christophe David 1956, éd. l'Encyclopédie des Nuisances,  coll." Editions IVREA", Paris, 2002, 360 p. Read the table of contents. Read the back cover.