Hamon law

Law No.2014-344 of 17 March 2014 on consumption is referred to as the “Hamon Law”.

This law constitutes an important reform of consumer law. This text goes beyond consumer law and has involved amendments to other branches of law such as competition law and distribution law.

In adopting this law, the legislator pursued various objectives, including the adaptation of French law to European Union law, and in particular Directive 2011/83/EU of 25 October 2011, the introduction of a class action in French law, the improvement of consumer protection measures. The legislator also wanted to guarantee the effectiveness of consumer law, which is too little known by consumers.

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In consumer law, the major contributions of the Hamon law are as follows:

– legal definition of “consumer“: introduction of a restrictive definition of consumer which can now only be understood as a “natural person” (preliminary article of the Consumer Code);

– strengthening the obligation of pre-contractual consumer information (Articles L.111-1 to L.111-4 of the Consumer Code);

– compliance of the provisions relating to distance sales and off-premises contracts with Directive 2011/83/EU of 25 October 2011 and in particular extension of the withdrawal period for consumers from 7 to 14 days (Article L.121-16 et seq. of the Consumer Code);

– strengthening of the mechanism to combat unfair terms: the law increases the powers of the judge, the DGCCRF and consumer associations in this area. Indeed, the judge now has the power to dismiss ex officio, in the context of litigation, the application of a clause whose unfairness emerges from the debates. Consumer associations may ask the competent court to declare that the disputed clause is deemed unwritten in all identical contracts concluded by the trader with consumers.

Please find here our video relating to unfair terms, in which a judgment of the Court of Appeal of Grenoble was delivered on 16 January 2016.

– introduction of a class action: consumers now have a new tool that allows them to join an authorized association to obtain compensation for their damages from professionals (Articles L.423-1 et seq. of the Consumer Code).

This law also strengthened the powers of officials of the Competition Authority (ADLC) and the Ministry of the Economy to investigate competition and created a new power of injunctions and sanctions in the event of infringement of the rules of tariff transparency, restrictive practices or other practices prohibited by the Commercial Code.

In terms of distribution law, the Hamon law strengthened the framework for commercial negotiation by amending Articles L.441-6 and L.441-7 of the Commercial Code. The formality of the single agreement is reinforced in order to regulate the various price reductions and discounts negotiated by the buyer in return for the services rendered to the supplier.