In France, the Commercial Code (hereinafter, the "Commercial Code") requires suppliers and distributors of products (or service providers) to sign a written agreement (hereinafter, the "Single Agreement") before March 1 of the year in which it takes effect (hereinafter, the "Legal Deadline"), and to renew it periodically on the same date.
Created by the 2008 French Law on the Modernization of the Economy, this obligation aims to preserve the fairness and balance of commercial relations and prevent the abuse of economic power by parties in a position of strength, historically the players in mass retailing.
While the material scope of these provisions of the French Commercial Code (supplier-distributor relations) was defined from the outset, the question of their spatial scope, outside the territory of the French Republic, gave rise to debate.
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