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

Article 2 of Directive No 93/13 of 5 April 1993 defines the consumer as any natural person who is acting for purposes which are outside his professional activity. Therefore, within the meaning of the directive, the consumer cannot be a legal entity . Until the Hamon Law of 17 March 2014, there was no general definition of the consumer in French law but, as in Union law, case law rendered pursuant to former Article L. 132-1 (current Article L. 212-1) of the Consumer Code considered that the status of consumer was the opposite of that of legal person . The Hamon Law, which transposed Directive No 2011/83 of 25 October 2011 into French law, added a preliminary article to the Consumer Code, which now defines the consumer as “any natural person acting for purposes which do not fall within the framework of his commercial, industrial, craft or liberal activity” . The re-codification Ordinance of 14 March 2016 supplements the definition of the preliminary article (now the introductory article) by including the agricultural activity. The adoption of a restrictive definition of the consumer is, however, of very limited practical interest as French law also protects, as permitted by Directive No 93/13, non-professionals.

The concept of consumer implies the performance of an act of consumption, i.e. the purchase of a product or subscription to a service for family or personal ends . The provisions of the Consumer Code relating to  unfair terms are applicable to a lawyer's fee agreement when the client is a non-professional or a consumer . On the other hand, this is not the case of the signing of a publishing contract by an author . Similarly, a job seeker, whose status is governed by the special provisions of the Labor Code who has entered into a training contract to acquire and have validated knowledge in naturopathy, partly financed by the Pôle emploi (French public employment office) cannot be classified as a consumer in the light of the professional objective of the contract. According to certain rulings, the fact that the good or service is free of charge does not preclude it from being classified as an act of consumption when, in return, the professional derives external income from the consumer's use of his service . On the other hand, an online gambler may be regarded as a consumer . 

Pursuant to some decisions, the fact that a good or service is free does not exclude the qualification of an act of consumption when, in return, the professional derives external income from the consumer's accession to its platform , e.g. from the exploitation of his/her personal data.The application of Article L.212-1 does not imply that the contract is onerous but depends solely on the status of the parties to the contract as consumers and professionals. However, according to the court, the social media  platform that collects and sells the personal data of its users to its partners for a fee is acting for commercial purposes and is a professional for the purposes of consumer law. Therefore, a contract concluded with a user for non-professional purposes is indeed a consumer contract.

1 Similarly, the status of consumer is not incompatible with that of the beneficiary of a stipulation for the benefit of third parties. Thus, the borrower's accession to the group insurance contract taken out by its bank creates - between the subscriber and the insurer - a direct contractual link based on reciprocity, which is subject to the rules on unfair terms in contracts . By extension, the works council which contracts with a travel agency on behalf of employees benefits from protection against unfair terms as its intervention does not go beyond the choice of services among those proposed by the agency and the negotiation of the price . On the other hand, a municipality cannot claim protection against the unfair terms in a contract with another municipality  or a credit institution .

Finally, the Court of Cassation, unsure as to how to rule in a dispute with regard to the provisions of Directive No 93/13,  referred a question to the Court of Justice on the applicability of the notion of consumer to a company employee having contracted a mortgage with his employer . The Court of Justice ruled that the employee could indeed be classified as a consumer within the meaning of the directive .

 Case C-541/99 and C-542/99 Cape SNC v Idealservice Srl, Judgment of 22 November 2001, LawLex201100000276JBJ.

 CA Paris, 19 February 2003, LawLex200300002279JBJ.

 CA Paris, 21 November 1996, LawLex200300002007JBJ.

 CAA (Administrative Court of Appeal) Lyon, 28 April 2016, LawLex201600001261JBJ.

 CA Versailles, 21 September 2016, LawLex201600001595JBJ.

 Cass. civ. 1re, 4 October 2017, LawLex201700001603JBJ.

Case C-590/17 Pouvin v Électricité de France, Judgment of 21 March 2019, LawLex202000001693JBJ and  on referral, Cass.,1re ch.civ.,5 June 2019, LawLex201900000750JBJ.

For the exclusion of an artisan from the protection, see CA Versailles, 12 March2020,

 CA Lyon, 6 November 2014, LawLex201400001278JBJ; CA Pau, 11 February 2020, LawLex202000000224JBJ, holding that the contract between a top-level athlete and a chartered accountancy firm, to perform the tax declaration obligations incumbent on him as for any private individual, is not concluded for a professional purpose. cf.CA Grenoble, 14 November 2017, LawLex201700001902JBJ which held that a franchise reservation agreement offered to an individual with no experience in the the field of activity in question is subject to the protective provisions of the Consumer Code.

Cass. Civ. 2nd, 27 October 2022, LawLex202200009528JBJ.

 CA Paris, 3 September 2010, LawLex201300000426JBJ.

Cass. civ. 1re, 9 March 2022, LawLex202200001446JBJ.

Cons. d'Ét., 24 March 2021, LawLex202100000934JBJ, adding that the national gambling authority does not breach the preliminary article of the Consumer Code when it holds that an online gambling or betting operator is likely to be considered as a professional.

 TGI Paris, 5 March 2015, Facebook, LawLex201600000336JBJ, upheld in CA Paris, 12 February 2016, LawLex201600000307JBJ; TGI Paris, 7 August 2018, Twitter, LawLex201800001667JBJ; 12 February 2019, Google+, LawLex201900000345JBJ; 9 April 2019, Facebook, LawLex201900000884JBJ.

 Cass. 1re civ., 22 May 2008, LawLex200800000759JBJ.

404. Status as consumer