Business Law

In two judgments handed down on February 28, 2023, the summary judge of the Paris Judicial Court declared inadmissible the claims of several environmental protection associations seeking that TotalEnergies be ordered to comply with its duty of vigilance obligations under the Law No. 2017-399 of March 27, 2017.

Law No. 2016-1691 on transparency, the fight against corruption and the modernization of the economy of December 9, 2016, commonly referred to as the “Sapin II Law”, has provided France with innovative tools inter alia to detect, prevent and punish corruption and breaches of probity.

The reinforcement of the legal arsenal to better fight corruption is one of the major pillars of this Law, and the risks associated to breaches of compliance rules can prove to be a deterrent for buyers in the context of M&A transactions.

On June 27, 2017, the European Commission imposed a €2.42 billion fine on Google for abusing its dominant position by favoring its own comparison shopping service over competing comparison shopping services.

Google and its parent company Alphabet appealed against this decision before the General Court of the European Union. The Court, in a recent ruling dated November 10, 2021, upheld the European Commission’s decision.

Ordinance No. 2021-1247 published on September 29, 2021 transposes into French consumer law European Directives (EU) 2019/770 and (EU) 2019/771 of May 20, 2019 and introduces a new legal guarantee of conformity specific to digital contents and services.

The new provisions will apply as from January 1, 2022.

The French Government has renewed the possibility for companies to pay to their employees a bonus exempted from taxes and social security contributions for the period between June 1, 2021 and March 31, 2022.

The French Competition Authority published on July 30, 2021 a notice on the method for determining fines in relation to anticompetitive practices, which repeals and replaces the previous notice dated May 16, 2011.

This new notice, based on case law and the decisions rendered by the French Competition Authority in the last ten years, draws the consequences of the transposition of the ECN+ Directive aimed at increasing the effectiveness of competition rules within the European Union.