The Assembly voted for a measure aimed at simplifying cancellation procedures, which are sometimes tedious for consumers.
In the week of very animated discussions in the National Assembly around the bill on purchasing power, measures examined Thursday afternoon by the deputies offer a bubble of consensus. The hemicycle has indeed voted for an article aimed at facilitating the termination of subscriptions taken out online.
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A government proposal which clashes with the package of measures devoted to upgrading and mitigating the rise in energy prices, but which the executive justifies by its desire to reduce the share of “constrained expenses“, Where “pre-committed expenseswhich weigh on household budgets. Concretely, the executive wishes that any subscription taken out in three clicks online can be terminated in the same way. Services that ask to send registered letters and other phone calls at restrictive times would thus be forced by law to review their methods. And consumers will thus be less discouraged when faced with the sometimes complex unsubscription process.
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Consensus measure
The question that remains to be decided concerns the time limit for the entry into force of the measure. On the left, we plead for a rapid implementation – within a few months – while the right pleads for a longer period to allow companies to have time to comply.
The executive, he wants to follow the example of Germany, which adopted a similar measure, with entry into force eight months later. Thus, by insisting on the urgent nature of the text of the law, the government hopes to bring it into force no later than February 1, 2023. On the other hand, the measure is not at this stage accompanied by specific sanctions in the event of non -respect. But the DGCCRF and the ACR will be in charge of monitoring the law.
During a press briefing this week, Olivia Grégoire insisted that this measure would only apply to “daily contracts concluded online“. “Because if we imposed this termination electronically on all contracts concluded at a distance, this could force certain companies, in particular VSEs or SMEs, to make significant investments.», such as setting up a dedicated website on which to terminate the contract.
Nevertheless, this measure may be important for the budget of the French on which the constrained expenses weigh more and more. Between 2001 and 2017, the share of expenditure “pre-committed» in the expenditure of the French has thus increased from 27% to 32%. An explanation often brandished by the authorities to explain the “net disconnect between perceived purchasing power and measured purchasing power“, as exposed in a note France Strategy, organization attached to Matignon. Among the expenditure items taken into account by France Strategy: rent, water, gas and electricity expenditure, telephone and internet subscriptions, television services such as license fees and subscriptions to channels and streaming services, school canteen costs, or mortgage repayments.