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

To avoid the prohibition under Article L. 121-20 (former Article L. 121-36) of the Consumer Code, an advertising lottery must constitute a fair commercial practice in light of Article L. 121-1 (former article L. 120-1) of the same code. The requirement of fairness encompasses all the former criteria of lawfulness inasmuch as they were intended to avoid deceiving the consumer. In order to be fair, the lottery must not be contrary to the requirements of professional diligence or distort or be likely to materially distort the economic behavior of the average consumer and be neither misleading nor aggressive.

Directive No 2005/29 defines the material distortion of the economic behavior of the consumer in Article 2, e) as “using a commercial practice to appreciably impair the consumer's ability to make an informed decision, thereby causing the consumer to take a transactional decision that he would not have taken otherwise”. In addition, according to Article 2, h), professional diligence corresponds to “the standard of special skill and care which a trader may reasonably be expected to exercise towards consumers, commensurate with honest market practice and/or the general principle of good faith in the trader's field of activity”. In recital 20, the text recommends “provid[ing] a role for codes of conduct, which enable traders to apply the principles of this directive effectively in specific economic fields.  In sectors where the behavior of professionals is subject to specific binding requirements, they should also be taken into account for the purposes of the professional diligence requirements in the sector concerned. The control exercised by code owners at national or Community level to eliminate unfair commercial practices may avoid the need for recourse to administrative or judicial action and should therefore be encouraged [...]”.

In accordance with these requirements, any lottery must respect the Guidance issued by the International Chamber of Commerce in the consolidated ICC Code on Advertising and Commercial Communication Practices , the "Digital Advertising Communication Recommendation of December 20, 2010  of the Advertising Regulatory Authority (ARPP) - in particular as regards the rules on misleading advertising - and its Recommendation on promotional games of October 1998 , and the Commission Recommendation on principles for the protection of consumers and players of online gambling services and for the prevention of minors from gambling online (which also applies to lotteries) . Furthermore, a lottery cannot disregard the regulations on the collection of personal data, in particular the provisions of Law No 2004-575 of June 21, 2004 for trust in the digital economy (LCEN)  and the ethical rules contained in the Code of Conduct on the use of electronic contact details for the purposes of direct marketing of the French Union of Direct and Digital Marketing (UFMD) .

Included in the essential, easily accessible information that must be provided to the consumer, the lottery organizer must clearly and legibly describe the operation in itself, making clear on first reading the random element of the lottery, the conditions of participation in the lottery, including the participation costs it involves, the prize, its conditions of award and delivery, the start date and end date of the lottery. Even if no longer required by law, compliance with professional diligence requires the drafting of rules, whose deposit with a ministerial officer constitutes a guarantee of fairness.

 accessible at the following address: http://www.arpp-pub.org/lancement-code-icc.html

 http://www.arpp-pub.org/IMG/pdf/Reco_Comm_Pub_Digitale-3.pdf.

 http://www.arpp-pub.org/IMG/pdf/Jeux_promotionnels.pdf

 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/FR/TXT/PDF/?uri=OJ:JOL_2014_214_R_0012&amp ; from = FRA#page = 1 & amp ; zoom =    auto,-22,455

 http://www.uda.fr/?leadmin/documents_pdf/Droit_?scalite/deontologie/Code_UFMD    prospection_E_MAILING_8_avril_2005.pdf

248. Fair commercial practice