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

Advertising can reach consumers through a wide variety of media: outdoor billboards, radio, television, written press, internet, etc. The dissemination of advertisements has evolved considerably over the past few years with the growing importance of the internet  and mobile phones for communication. Although the traditional media such as the press or the audiovisual sector, or even billboards still play a major role, their market shares have dropped in favor of online advertising which not only allows more consumers to be reached, but also and especially improves targeting through geolocation , the tracking of online activity and social networks.

In this section we will focus on internet and audiovisual advertising, which will no doubt be the principal advertising media of the future. We have made the deliberate choice not to examine the rules on outdoor advertising which fall under the area of adminstrative regulation.

It is expected that the share of internet advertising - fixed and mobile combined - will exceed that of the audiovisual and written press advertising. According to a subsidiary of Publicis, “the importance of the traditional press in the advertising expenditure, which was still 39.4% in 2007, should drop to 19.6% this year and 16.7% by 2017. TV will then take 35.9% of advertising spending, fixed internet 19.1% and mobile internet 15%”, Le Figaro Economie, 14 September 2015.

To faciliate the realization of the digital internal market, the European legislature has adopted Regulation No 2018/302 of 28 February 2018 on addressing unjustified geo-blocking and other forms of discrimination based on customers' nationality, place of residence or place of establishment within the internal market and amending Regulations (EC) No 2006/2004 and (EU) 2017/2394 and Directive No 2009/22/EC, which entered into force on 3 December 2018. 

74. Sectoral regulation