Droit de la consommation

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Consumer law belongs to the sphere of private law. It very strongly derogates from the classic civil law of the Civil Code. Thus, according to certain traditionalist authors, under the empire of consumer law, contractual freedom is not full and entire, because a contracting party (the consumer) can criticize a stipulation and obtain its judicial annihilation (deemed unwritten) when he knowingly accepted the contract.
However, modern analyzes of the economy and the law explain, on the contrary, these derogations by the fact that, in the relationship with a professional, within the framework of a contract and pre-written and non-modifiable general conditions, it there is such an asymmetry in the information and the forces involved that contractual freedom has only become an illusion1.
Consumer law is therefore now presented as one of the two pillars (along with competition law) of economic law. It is not only a question of protecting the weak party to the contract (public order of protection) to avoid a society of predation and injustice, but also of allowing that the request plays correctly its role in the functioning of the market (public order of management) to prevent the immoral competitor from selling worse or more expensive products against his more loyal competitor2.
Consumer law is often described as unclear and very technical. Its main purpose is to protect the consumer in order to make the act of consumption safer. Thus, beyond the simple protection of a party deemed to be weak, consumer law also aims to promote the development of consumption in a market economy context. To the code is added case law.

Consumer law is very diverse: it governs food3 and non-food products, product liability, services, credit, all everyday contracts, advertising and sales promotions, homeownership housing.
A great originality of consumer law also consists in obliging the trader to grant the consumer a period of reflection or withdrawal between the signing of the contract and its taking effect (in terms of consumer credit and doorstep selling or distance selling) or in other cases before signing (for mortgage). On this model, the legislator imposes periods of reflection and withdrawal in areas outside of consumer law as in the sale of real estate. It should be noted, however, that no time limit for reflection or withdrawal is provided for in common law. This concretely means that any purchase made on the premises of a professional is final, even if the consumer would not have measured the scope of his purchase decision (except to reserve the case where the sale is consecutive to canvassing at home by phone or by mail). A party does not have the power to annul the contract made, except to demonstrate before the judge the existence of a defect of consent (art. 1108 et seq. Of the Civil Code).