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Contracting with users

Mandatory rules protecting professional and non-professional users

 

Our teams help you organise the contracting process with the platform's users and to ensure that the content of your platform's general terms and conditions of use and sale complies with the rules protecting these users (consumers or professionals).

Rapidly Evolving Regulation

Strengthened by the Covid-19 pandemic, e-commerce now plays an essential role in the French economy.

In order to promote the development of this activity and to protect consumers, the legislator has for many years adopted mandatory rules regarding the consent of these consumers (pre-contractual information obligation, acceptance of general terms and conditions of sale, right of withdrawal, etc.).

At the same time, noting that many professionals could depend on digital platforms for their businesses, the legislator regularly extends the body of rules intended to regulate the commercial practices of platforms.

This legal framework also aims to clarify the nature of contractual relations between certain platforms, in particular digital labour platforms and their users, in order to secure legal relationships and guarantee the rights, especially labour rights, of users.

Get Expert Support

Our teams will help you to:

  • adapt your business model to the legal requirements regarding parity of offers or non-competition;
  • review the contractual relations with users and the specific conditions of performance of their  services, in order to identify possible risks of requalification;
  • define the respective liabilities of suppliers and the platform in terms of VAT and customs or in terms of regulations (e.g. information on the repairability index of electrical and electronic equipment, management of unsold goods);
  • secure the purchasing process of the platform's users: to deliver the mandatory pre-contractual information, to obtain consent of users for the terms of use and the personal data protection policy;
  • draft general terms and conditions of sale and negotiate contracts complying with the European legal framework for relations between platforms and user companies (European "Platform to business" regulation (P2B), in effect since 12 July 2020) and the national framework for unfair commercial practices;
  • enter into distance contracts;
  • anticipate the rules in preparation at national and European level, such as the future requirements applicable to essential platforms known as "gatekeepers" (European Commission's draft Digital Market Act).

 

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