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

Paragraph 3 of Article L. 212-1 of the Consumer Code sets a condition to the assessment of the unfair nature of clauses relating to the definition of the main purpose of the contract or the adequacy of the price or remuneration of the good sold or service offered: written in a plain and intelligible manner. Therefore, clauses which are lacking in clarity or ambiguously worded are subject to judici …

Clear and intelligible terms

Paragraph 3 of Article L. 212-1 of the Consumer Code sets a condition to the assessment of the unfair nature of clauses relating to the definition of the main purpose of the contract or the adequacy of the price or remuneration of the good sold or service offered: written in a plain and intelligible manner. Therefore, clauses which are lacking in clarity or ambiguously worded are subject to judicial review. This is the case for general conditions printed in very small font size 6 characters , or the limitation of liability clause printed in letters of font size 8 or smaller and in gray ink on a white background, i.e. virtually illegibly and barely visible for the consumer . Similarly, lottery rules in the form of a compact block of 15 articles printed in small characters which are difficult to read, while advertising documents are numerous, personalized, attractive, colorful and large, do not comply with Article L. 212-1 . To avoid these grievances, the Unfair Terms Commission recommends the use of characters of at least font size 8 . Going even further, the Court of Cassation held that when the general and special conditions are shown on the back of the contract, the clauses concerning the customer's consent and those relating to the order cancellation form must be written in the same font and same character size as those of the previous sections to draw the customer's attention . However, clauses are written clearly when the brown color of the paper used has more or less dark shades from the top to the bottom of the page and does not prevent the reading of the clearly printed characters, some of which are in bold .

According to the Court of Justice, the wording of the clause must not only be correct on the formal and grammatical level, it should also allow the consumer to foresee the resulting economic consequences for him, on the basis of precise and intelligible criteria . The assessment of the unfairness of an interest rate revision clause must thus lead the court to investigate whether the bank has provided the borrower with sufficient and accurate information enabling an average consumer, normally informed and reasonably attentive and informed, to understand the concrete operation of the financial mechanism in question and to assess the risk of the potentially significant negative economic consequences of this clause, in the event of a significant depreciation of the currency in which the income is received in relation to the currency of account, on the borrower's financial obligations throughout the term of the contract. 

The clause in a repair contract which, by its ambiguous wording, does not allow the non-professional customer to know the extent of what he commits to and what is specifically excluded from the scope of the liability of the repairer, is unfair . The same applies to the unemployment insurance clause in a mortgage loan contract which, due to its abstruse nature for a lay reader, implies the benefit of a total guarantee, whereas only the deferral of monthly repayments due during the period of unemployment is provided for  or a clause which allows an agent to retain the part of the sale price received from the buyer over a certain amount, where he does not specify the amount of his remuneration . On the other hand, the entirely clear and precise provisions of a contract for tracing succession on the bases of calculation of the fee, expressly indicated as not including tax, excludes any complaint of unfairness, when the consumer cannot seriously claim to be unaware of the VAT rate . Similarly, the terms in a mortgage loan agreement which define the main object of the contract by providing for the conversion into Swiss francs of the balance of the monthly payments after payment of the ancillary charges of the loan is not unfair insofar as it is clear and intelligible, when it specifies that the loan is made in Swiss francs, it is amortized by converting the fixed installments paid in euros, the conversion is carried out at an exchange rate that may rise or fall, and that this may result in the extension or reduction of the loan's amortization period and, if necessary, may modify the total amount to be repaid, and when a quantified simulation is annexed to the loan proposal making it possible to assess the impact of exchange rate fluctuations on the capital borrowed and the resulting change in the period of the loan . In contrast, a document written in English, which explains to the French borrower the mechanism and risks of repayment of a loan indexed on a foreign currency, without including any numerical examples, a simulation or any explanation of the distinction between the account currency and the initial currency has been held to be unfair . However, a limitation of liability clause included in a rental contract may be declared unfair, despite its clear and precise wording, when other indications in the contract suggest to the consumer that the professional undertakes to monitor the premises .

These formal requirements are not specific to the rules on unfair terms. Article L. 211-1 of the Consumer Code on the general conditions of contracts also specifies that the clauses of contracts proposed by professionals to consumers or non-professionals must be presented and drafted in a clear and comprehensible manner  and are interpreted in case of doubt in the sense most favorable to the consumer or non-professional . Accordingly, terms which use imprecise terminology, undefined concepts, inaccurate or even misleading wording or use the conditional tense, fragment the information relating to the trader's exemption from liability, by disseminating fragmented information in different paragraphs and subdivisions of paragraphs, by forcing the consumer to read its provisions in a piecemeal manner and to make a contrario assumptions do not meet the requirements of clarity and intelligibility laid down by Article L. 211-1 of the Consumer Code .

 CA Aix-en-Provence, 26 May 2005, LawLex200700000109JBJ, Contrats Conc. Consom. 2006, No 54, obs. RAYMOND.

  TI Lagny-sur-Marne District Court, 25 September 1995, LawLex200400000683JBJ; TI Vienne, 15 December 2000, LawLex200400001584JBJ, illegibility of information printed in characters with a font size lower than 8. Cf. TGI Grenoble, 31 January 2002, LawLex200600002473JBJ, use of characters with a font size of at least 8 is one of the conditions of legibility allowing the buyer to really discover the general conditions.

Cass. 1re civ., 27 November 2019, LawLex201900001477JBJ.

 CA Toulouse, 26 April 2007, LawLex201300000576JBJ.

Cass. 1re civ., 12 December 2018, LawLex201800001979JBJ; 20 February 2019, LawLex201900000280JBJ; 13 March 2019, LawLex201900000365JBJ; 10 April 2019, LawLex201900000548JBJ; 10 October 2019, LawLex201900001207JBJ.

CA Lyon, 20 February 2020, LawLex202000000296JBJ; Cass. 1re civ., 18 November 2024, LawLex202400006666JBJ: terms relating to the conversion into euros of a loan contract drawn up in a foreign currency, which alone do not make it possible to assess the personalized nature of the explanations provided, when the borrowers have not received any simulation figures and the certificate is drafted in relatively general terms, are unfair.

 See CA Toulouse, 3 July 2007, LawLex201300000563JBJ.

 See CA Paris, 5 June 2015, LawLex201500000706JBJ, holding that a purchase order, the presentation of which is not very accessible to the consumer, due to the font size used, its foldable format and the color of the characters chosen, do not allow the consumer to easily perform a complete examination of the conditions of sale of the product purchased.

 For an application to an ambiguous clause on the definition of the disability risk, Cass. 1re civ., 21 January 2003, LawLex200400001137JBJ, overturning CA Toulouse, 26 January 2000, LawLex200400001384JBJ. See also Cass. 1re civ., 22 May 2008, LawLex200800000759JBJ; 11 January 2017,  LawLex201700000079JBJ.

TJ Paris, 9 June 2020, LawLex202000000514JBJ.

 CA Paris, 19 December 2003, LawLex200400001105JBJ.

 CCA, Recommendation No 94-02 of 17 December 1991 on contracts with payment cards with or without credit.

 Cass. 1re civ., 14 November 2006, LawLex200600002421JBJ. See also, on the presence of terms in small type on the back of the document, CA Paris, February 2010, LawLex201300000428JBJ.

 CA Toulouse, 27 September 2007, LawLex201300000445JBJ.

 See Case C-96/14 Van Hove v. CNP Assurances SA, Judgment of 23 April 2015,  LawLex201500000531JBJ.

Cass. 1re civ. 28 September 2022, LawLex202200008286JBJ. See already Cass. 1re civ. 7 September 2022, LawLex202200006670JBJ.

CA Rouen, 19 June 2008, LawLex201300000431JBJ. Cf., Cass. 1re civ., 3 April 2007, LawLex201300000550JBJ retaining the clear and unambiguous nature of a limitation of liability clause included in a lease for professional use, .

 CA Paris, 15 June 2001, LawLex200400001190JBJ.

French Consumer Law

410. Clear and intelligible terms

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410. Clear and intelligible terms

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Les décisions de justice citées dans ce paragraphe :

Les notions juridiques connexes

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