French Consumer Law is a comprehensive and comparative overview of French and EU law in this field, covering: advertising, unfair commercial practices, conditions for the validity of contracts, unfair terms, product conformity, latent defects, product safety.

French Consumer Law

From the conception to the publication of an advertisement, a variety of different operators  and contracts come into play. A trader wishing to promote its products or services - the advertiser - uses the services of an advertising agency which will either make the ad itself or outsource . Agencies are often tasked, if necessary assisted by a media planner, with ensuring that their client uses the most suitable media platform for the dissemination of the message and sometimes with paying for its services. The purchase of space will be made directly from the medium or the advertising agency mandated by the latter to commercialize its spaces.

Before 1993, advertising agencies in the form of central purchasing bodies could also purchase wholesale for their own account advertising space for resale to advertisers. In 1990, the Competition Council - now Competition Authority - initiated proceedings of its own motion on competition in the advertising sector. In its decision, the Council exposed and sanctioned an opaque system guaranteeing hidden payments to agencies through the use of discounts and rebates granted by the advertising media, which were not passed on to advertisers, who were billed excessively for the service . Once alerted about such practices, the legislature decided to put an end to them before the publication of the Council's decision in the Law of 29 January 1993, known as the Sapin Law . Article 20 of the law prohibits the activity of centralized purchasing of advertising space: the purchase of advertising space can now only be carried out by an intermediary acting for the account of an advertiser in the context of a written agreement. The invoice must also be provided directly to the advertiser, even if the purchase is paid for by the agency on behalf of the latter. To increase the transparency of the market, Article 21 specifies that the agent may not receive any payment other that the one paid to him by the principal nor any remuneration or benefit of any kind from the seller of advertising space. Finally, media planners cannot receive payments or benefits from space sellers (Art. 22) and must disclose any financial links they may have with the latter (Art. 24).

By following the chronology, we will first look at the rules relating to contracts for the creation of advertisements, which apply to the relations between advertiser and advertising agency (I), before turning to the dissemination of the advertising message (II).

We will not be dealing here with the purchase of advertising space online which raises specific issues due to the increasing numbers of operators and to online auction systems putting various advertisers and media in competition with each other on several types of platforms, and requiring the intervention of multiple technical operators.

The rules governing commissioning contracts for advertisements are laid down in Article L. 132-31 of the Intellectual Property Code.

Competition Council decision No 93-D-59 of 15 December 1993, LawLex200200002516JBJ.

Law No 93-122 of 29 January 1993 on the prevention of corruption and transparency in business and public procedures, OJ 30 January 1993.

35. Multi-contract relations