Considerations on COM(2011)635 - Common European Sales Law - Main contents
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| dossier | COM(2011)635 - Common European Sales Law. |
|---|---|
| document | COM(2011)635  |
| date | October 11, 2011 |
(2) Contracts are the indispensable legal tool for every economic transaction. However, the need for traders to identify or negotiate the applicable law, to find out about the provisions of a foreign applicable law often involving translation, to obtain legal advice to make themselves familiar with its requirements and to adapt their contracts to different national laws that may apply in cross-border dealings makes cross-border trade more complex and costly compared to domestic trade. Contract-law-related barriers are thus a major contributing factor in dissuading a considerable number of export-oriented traders from entering cross-border trade or expanding their operations into more Member States. Their deterrent effect is particularly strong for small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) for which the costs of entering multiple foreign markets are often particularly high in relation to their turnover. As a consequence, traders miss out on cost savings they could achieve if it were possible to market goods and services on the basis of one uniform contract law for all their cross-border transactions and, in the online environment, one single web-site.
(3) Contract law related transaction costs which have been shown to be of considerable proportions and legal obstacles stemming from the differences between national mandatory consumer protection rules have a direct effect on the functioning of the internal market in relation to business–to–consumer transactions. Pursuant to Article 6 of Regulation 593/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 June 2008 on the law applicable to contractual obligations (Regulation (EC) No 593/2008),[19] whenever a trader directs its activities to consumers in another Member State the consumer protection provisions of the Member State of the consumer's habitual residence that provide a higher level of protection and cannot be derogated from by agreement by virtue of that law will apply, even where another applicable law has been chosen by the parties. Therefore, traders need to find out in advance whether the consumer's law provides higher protection and ensure that their contract is in compliance with its requirements. In addition, in e-commerce, web-site adaptations which need to reflect mandatory requirements of applicable foreign consumer contract laws entail further costs. The existing harmonisation of consumer law at Union level has led to a certain approximation in some areas. However the differences between Member States' laws remain substantial; existing harmonisation leaves Member States a broad range of options on how to comply with the requirements of Union legislation and where to set the level of consumer protection.
(4) The contract-law-related barriers which prevent traders from fully exploiting the potential of the internal market also work to the detriment of consumers. Less cross-border trade results in fewer imports and less competition. Consumers may be disadvantaged by a limited choice of goods at higher prices both because fewer foreign traders offer their products and services directly to them and also indirectly as a result of restricted cross-border business-to-business trade at the wholesale level. While cross-border shopping could bring substantial economic advantages in terms of more and better offers, many consumers are also reluctant to engage in cross-border shopping, because of the uncertainty about their rights. Some of the main consumer concerns are related to contract law, for instance whether they would enjoy adequate protection in the event of purchasing defective products. As a consequence, a substantial number of consumers prefer to shop domestically even if this means they have less choice or pay higher prices.
(5) In addition, those consumers who want to benefit from price differences between Member States by purchasing from a trader from another Member State are often hindered due to a trader's refusal to sell. While e-commerce has greatly facilitated the search for offers as well as the comparison of prices and other conditions irrespective of where a trader is established, orders by consumers from abroad are very frequently refused by traders which refrain from entering into cross-border transactions.
(6) Differences in national contract laws therefore constitute barriers which prevent consumers and traders from reaping the benefits of the internal market. Those contract-law-related barriers would be significantly reduced if contracts could be based on a single uniform set of contract law rules irrespective of where parties are established. Such a uniform set of contract law rules should cover the full life cycle of a contract and thus comprise the areas which are the most important when concluding contracts. It should also include fully harmonised provisions to protect consumers.
(7) The differences between national contract laws and their effect on cross-border trade also serve to limit competition. With a low level of cross-border trade, there is less competition, and thus less incentive for traders to become more innovative and to improve the quality of their products or to reduce prices. Particularly in smaller Member States with a limited number of domestic competitors, the decision of foreign traders to refrain from entering these markets due to costs and complexity may limit competition, resulting in an appreciable impact on choice and price levels for available products. In addition, the barriers to cross-border trade may jeopardise competition between SME and larger companies. In view of the significant impact of the transaction costs in relation to turnover, an SME is much more likely to refrain from entering a foreign market than a larger competitor.
(8) To overcome these contract-law-related barriers, parties should have the possibility to agree that their contracts should be governed by a single uniform set of contract law rules with the same meaning and interpretation in all Member States, a Common Sales Law. The Common European Sales Law should represent an additional option increasing the choice available to parties and open to use whenever jointly considered to be helpful in order to facilitate cross-border trade and reduce transaction and opportunity costs as well as other contract-law-related obstacles to cross-border trade. It should become the basis of a contractual relationship only where parties jointly decide to use it.
(9) This Regulation establishes a Common European Sales Law. It harmonises the contract laws of the Member States not by requiring amendments to the pre-existing national contract law, but by creating within each Member State's national law a second contract law regime for contracts within its scope. This second regime should be identical throughout the Union and exist alongside the pre-existing rules of national contract law. The Common European Sales Law should apply on a voluntary basis, upon an express agreement of the parties, to a cross-border contract.
(10) The agreement to use the Common European Sales Law should be a choice exercised within the scope of the respective national law which is applicable pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 593/2008 or, in relation to pre-contractual information duties, pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 864/2007 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 July 2007 on the law applicable to non-contractual obligations (Regulation (EC) No 864/2007)[20], or any other relevant conflict of law rule. The agreement to use the Common European Sales Law should therefore not amount to, and not be confused with, a choice of the applicable law within the meaning of the conflict-of-law rules and should be without prejudice to them. This Regulation will therefore not affect any of the existing conflict of law rules.
(11) The Common European Sales Law should comprise of a complete set of fully harmonised mandatory consumer protection rules. In line with Article 114(3) of the Treaty, those rules should guarantee a high level of consumer protection with a view to enhancing consumer confidence in the Common European Sales Law and thus provide consumers with an incentive to enter into cross-border contracts on that basis. The rules should maintain or improve the level of protection that consumers enjoy under Union consumer law.
(12) Since the Common European Sales Law contains a complete set of fully harmonised mandatory consumer protection rules, there will be no disparities between the laws of the Member States in this area, where the parties have chosen to use the Common European Sales Law. Consequently, Article 6(2) Regulation (EC) No 593/2008, which is predicated on the existence of differing levels of consumer protection in the Member States, has no practical importance for the issues covered by the Common European Sales Law.
(13) The Common European Sales Law should be available for cross-border contracts, because it is in that context that the disparities between national laws lead to complexity and additional costs and dissuade parties from entering into contractual relationships. The cross-border nature of a contract should be assessed on the basis of the habitual residence of the parties in business-to-business contracts. In a business-to-consumer contract the cross-border requirement should be met where either the general address indicated by the consumer, the delivery address for the goods or the billing address indicated by the consumer are located in a Member State, but outside the State where the trader has its habitual residence.
(14) The use of the Common European Sales Law should not be limited to cross-border situations involving only Member States, but should also be available to facilitate trade between Member States and third countries. Where consumers from third countries are involved, the agreement to use the Common European Sales Law, which would imply the choice of a foreign law for them, should be subject to the applicable conflict-of-law rules.
(15) Traders engaging in purely domestic as well as in cross-border trade transactions may also find it useful to make use of a single uniform contract for all their transactions. Therefore Member States should be free to decide to make the Common European Sales Law available to parties for use in an entirely domestic setting.
(16) The Common European Sales Law should be available in particular for the sale of movable goods, including the manufacture or production of such goods, as this is the economically single most important contract type which could present a particular potential for growth in cross-border trade, especially in e-commerce.
(17) In order to reflect the increasing importance of the digital economy, the scope of the Common European Sales Law should also cover contracts for the supply of digital content. The transfer of digital content for storage, processing or access, and repeated use, such as a music download, has been growing rapidly and holds a great potential for further growth but is still surrounded by a considerable degree of legal diversity and uncertainty. The Common European Sales Law should therefore cover the supply of digital content irrespective of whether or not that content is supplied on a tangible medium.
(18) Digital content is often supplied not in exchange for a price but in combination with separate paid goods or services, involving a non-monetary consideration such as giving access to personal data or free of charge in the context of a marketing strategy based on the expectation that the consumer will purchase additional or more sophisticated digital content products at a later stage. In view of this specific market structure and of the fact that defects of the digital content provided may harm the economic interests of consumers irrespective of the conditions under which it has been provided, the availability of the Common European Sales Law should not depend on whether a price is paid for the specific digital content in question.
(19) With a view to maximising the added value of the Common European Sales Law its material scope should also include certain services provided by the seller that are directly and closely related to specific goods or digital content supplied on the basis of the Common European Sales Law, and in practice often combined in the same or a linked contract at the same time, most notably repair, maintenance or installation of the goods or the digital content.
(20) The Common European Sales Law should not cover any related contracts by which the buyer acquires goods or is supplied with a service, from a third party. This would not be appropriate because the third party is not part of the agreement between the contracting parties to use the rules of the Common European Sales Law. A related contract with a third party should be governed by the respective national law which is applicable according pursuant to Regulations (EC) No 593/2008 and (EC) No 864/2007 or any other relevant conflict of law rule.
(21) In order to tackle the existing internal market and competition problems in a targeted and proportionate fashion, the personal scope of the Common European Sales Law should focus on parties who are currently dissuaded from doing business abroad by the divergence of national contract laws with the consequence of a significant adverse impact on cross-border trade. It should therefore cover all business-to consumer transactions and contracts between traders where at least one of the parties is an SME drawing upon Commission Recommendation 2003/361 of 6 May 2003 concerning the definition of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises.[21] This should, however, be without prejudice to the possibility for Member States to enact legislation which makes the Common European Sales Law available for contracts between traders, neither of which is an SME. In any case, in business-to-business transactions, traders enjoy full freedom of contract and are encouraged to draw inspiration from the Common European Sales Law in the drafting of their contractual terms.
(22) The agreement of the parties to a contract is indispensable for the application of the Common European Sales Law. That agreement should be subject to strict requirements in business-to-consumer transactions. Since, in practice, it will usually be the trader who proposes the use of the Common European Sales Law, consumers must be fully aware of the fact that they are agreeing to the use of rules which are different from those of their pre-existing national law. Therefore, the consumer's consent to use the Common European Sales Law should be admissible only in the form of an explicit statement separate from the statement indicating the agreement to the conclusion of the contract. It should therefore not be possible to offer the use of the Common European Sales Law as a term of the contract to be concluded, particularly as an element of the trader's standard terms and conditions. The trader should provide the consumer with a confirmation of the agreement to use the Common European Sales Law on a durable medium.
(23) In addition to being a conscious choice, the consent of a consumer to the use of the Common European Sales Law should be an informed choice. The trader should therefore not only draw the consumer's attention to the intended use of the Common European Sales Law but should also provide information on its nature and its salient features. In order to facilitate this task for traders, thereby avoiding unnecessary administrative burdens, and to ensure consistency in the level and the quality of the information communicated to consumers, traders should supply consumers with the standard information notice provided for in this Regulation and thus readily available in all official languages in the Union. Where it is not possible to supply the consumer with the information notice, for example in the context of a telephone call, or where the trader has failed to provide the information notice, the agreement to use the Common European Sales Law should not be binding on the consumer until the consumer has received the information notice together with the confirmation of the agreement and has subsequently expressed consent.
(24) In order to avoid a selective application of certain elements of the Common European Sales Law, which could disturb the balance between the rights and obligations of the parties and adversely affect the level of consumer protection, the choice should cover the Common European Sales Law as a whole and not only certain parts of it.
(25) Where the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods would otherwise apply to the contract in question, the choice of the Common European Sales Law should imply an agreement of the contractual parties to exclude that Convention.
(26) The rules of the Common European Sales Law should cover the matters of contract law that are of practical relevance during the life cycle of the types of contracts falling within the material and personal scope, particularly those entered into online. Apart from the rights and obligations of the parties and the remedies for non-performance, the Common European Sales Law should therefore govern pre-contractual information duties, the conclusion of a contract including formal requirements, the right of withdrawal and its consequences, avoidance of the contract resulting from a mistake, fraud, threats or unfair exploitation and the consequences of such avoidance, interpretation, the contents and effects of a contract, the assessment and consequences of unfairness of contract terms, restitution after avoidance and termination and the prescription and preclusion of rights. It should settle the sanctions available in case of the breach of all the obligations and duties arising under its application.
(27) All the matters of a contractual or non-contractual nature that are not addressed in the Common European Sales Law are governed by the pre-existing rules of the national law outside the Common European Sales Law that is applicable under Regulations (EC) No 593/2008 and (EC) No 864/2007 or any other relevant conflict of law rule. These issues include legal personality, the invalidity of a contract arising from lack of capacity, illegality or immorality, the determination of the language of the contract, matters of non-discrimination, representation, plurality of debtors and creditors, change of parties including assignment, set-off and merger, property law including the transfer of ownership, intellectual property law and the law of torts. Furthermore, the issue of whether concurrent contractual and non-contractual liability claims can be pursued together falls outside the scope of the Common European Sales Law.
(28) The Common European Sales Law should not govern any matters outside the remit of contract law. This Regulation should be without prejudice to the Union or national law in relation to any such matters. For example, information duties which are imposed for the protection of health and safety or environmental reasons should remain outside the scope of the Common European Sales Law. This Regulation should further be without prejudice to the information requirements of Directive 2006/123/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 December 2006 on services in the internal market[22].
(29) Once there is a valid agreement to use the Common European Sales Law, only the Common European Sales Law should govern the matters falling within its scope. The rules of the Common European Sales Law should be interpreted autonomously in accordance with the well-established principles on the interpretation of Union legislation. Questions concerning matters falling within the scope of the Common European Sales Law which are not expressly settled by it should be resolved only by interpretation of its rules without recourse to any other law. The rules of the Common European Sales Law should be interpreted on the basis of the underlying principles and objectives and all its provisions.
(30) Freedom of contract should be the guiding principle underlying the Common European Sales Law. Party autonomy should be restricted only where and to the extent that this is indispensable, in particular for reasons of consumer protection. Where such a necessity exists, the mandatory nature of the rules in question should be clearly indicated.
(31) The principle of good faith and fair dealing should provide guidance on the way parties have to cooperate. As some rules constitute specific manifestations of the general principle of good faith and fair dealing, they should take precedent over the general principle. The general principle should therefore not be used as a tool to amend the specific rights and obligations of parties as set out in the specific rules. The concrete requirements resulting from the principle of good faith and fair dealing should depend, amongst others, on the relative level of expertise of the parties and should therefore be different in business-to-consumer transactions and in business-to-business transactions. In transactions between traders, good commercial practice in the specific situation concerned should be a relevant factor in this context.
(32) The Common European Sales Law should aim at the preservation of a valid contract whenever possible and appropriate in view of the legitimate interests of the parties.
(33) The Common European Sales Law should identify well-balanced solutions taking account the legitimate interests of the parties in designating and exercising the remedies available in the case of non-performance of the contract. In business-to-consumer contracts the system of remedies should reflect the fact that the non-conformity of goods, digital content or services falls within the trader's sphere of responsibility.
(34) In order to enhance legal certainty by making the case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union and of national courts on the interpretation of the Common European Sales Law or any other provision of this Regulation accessible to the public, the Commission should create a database comprising the final relevant decisions. With a view to making that task possible, the Member States should ensure that such national judgments are quickly communicated to the Commission.
(35) It is also appropriate to review the functioning of the Common European Sales Law or any other provision of this Regulation after five years of operation. The review should take into account, amongst other things, the need to extend further the scope in relation to business-to-business contracts, market and technological developments in respect of digital content and future developments of the Union acquis.
(36) Since the objective of this Regulation, namely to contribute to the proper functioning of the internal market by making available a uniform set of contract law rules that can be used for cross-border transactions throughout the Union, cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States and can therefore be better achieved at Union level, the Union may adopt measures, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity as set out in Article 5 of the Treaty on the European Union. In accordance with the principle of proportionality, as set out in that Article, this Regulation does not go beyond what is necessary in order to achieve that objective.
(37) This Regulation respects the fundamental rights and observes the principles recognised in particular by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and specifically Articles 16, 38 and 47 thereof.