Consumer Protection in French Law: General Principles and Recent Developments

Abstract

THE law of consumer protection' has been growing extensively in France for about ten years. It does not seem necessary to examine the reasons which motivated the creation of this protective law, the French context being very similar to that of other Western European countries. This answer to economic and technological changes was given by the legislature, which intervened several times, and so it is possible to consider the law of consumer protection as a conglomerate of various legal rules taken from different branches of the legal system. This assumption is correct to the extent that the consumer is indirectly protected by several fundamental principles contained in the Civil, Commercial and Penal Codes, and also directly by new rules enacted to support the public interest in the economic field. Nevertheless, the composite character of this branch of the law should not obscure the reality, as one must not forget that there are specific legislative techniques which do actually give a status to the consumer. This is why one should consider consumer law as a body of codified, statutory and jurisprudential rules which aim to restore a balance between parties whose economic strength is unequal. The principal statutes which should be mentioned here are, in the main, fairly recent. The first in the field was the Law of 1 August 1905 which dealt with frauds. This has been amended several times. It was