Who Enforces France's Fair-Trading Rules, the DGCCRF, the Minister and the Civil Fine

The restrictive-practices provisions of Title IV of Book IV of the French Commercial Code — chiefly Article L 442-1, which sanctions the abrupt termination of an established commercial relationship, the imposition of a significant imbalance in the rights and obligations of the parties, and the obtaining of an advantage without consideration or manifestly disproportionate to it — occupy an unusual position in French law. They protect a private interest, that of the operator squeezed or cut off by a stronger counterpart; but they also protect a public interest, the orderly functioning of the market and of competition. That double object is mirrored in a double machinery of enforcement, and it is the machinery, rather than the substantive prohibitions, that this article examines.

For a foreign supplier, distributor, retailer or intermediary, the practical significance is considerable. It is not only the aggrieved private party who may sue: a public authority may act on its own initiative, in its own name, for its own purposes, and may do so even where the victim prefers silence in order to preserve its commercial future. That public authority can seek the cessation of the practice, the restitution of sums unduly obtained, the nullity of an illicit clause, and — a remedy unavailable to the private claimant — a civil fine whose ceiling is measured against turnover. And because the authority is not a party to the contract, it is unencumbered by the arbitration, jurisdiction and choice-of-law clauses that a foreign business commonly relies upon to keep French law and French courts at bay.

The procedural architecture is equally particular. These disputes are not heard by the ordinary commercial courts at large, but by a closed list of eight specially designated courts at first instance, with the Paris Court of Appeal exclusively competent on appeal — a concentration enforced not by a plea of incompetence but by a bar to the action itself. What follows is organised as a sequence of questions, each answered as a self-contained analysis with the governing text and the controlling authorities. A civil-fine estimator accompanies the text, applying the three statutory ceilings to a set of figures to show which one bites.

Who may enforce France's restrictive-practices rules?

Article L 442-4 of the Commercial Code — the procedural companion to the substantive prohibitions of Article L 442-1 — organises enforcement along two independent tracks, to which a third, criminal, track is added for a narrow set of wrongs. The first track is private enforcement: the action "is brought before the competent civil or commercial court by any person justifying an interest" (Art. L 442-4, I). The second is public enforcement: the same action may be brought "by the public prosecutor (ministère public), by the Minister charged with the Economy or by the President of the Competition Authority" (Art. L 442-4, I). These are not two ways of putting the same case; they are distinct actions, with distinct claimants, distinct objects and distinct remedies.

The private action serves the victim's interest. Any person with an interest — the direct victim of the practice and, in some circumstances, an indirect victim — may seek the cessation of the practice and compensation for the loss suffered; but the statute reserves to "the party victim" alone the right to have an illicit clause or contract declared void (Art. L 442-4, I). The public action serves the market. The Minister for the Economy and the public prosecutor may seek the cessation of the practice, the restitution of undue sums (répétition de l'indu), the nullity of illicit clauses or contracts and, above all, the civil fine that no private claimant can request.

The rationale for the public track is not theoretical. As the commentary observes, the victim of a restrictive practice frequently declines to sue, in order to preserve the future of its commercial relations with the very party whose abuse it would have to denounce — an abuse that, by its nature, reveals that party's economic importance. The significant-imbalance prohibition in particular is enforced predominantly by the Minister for precisely this reason: the weaker party dares not challenge the stronger. The public action fills that gap, allowing the state to police conduct that the market's own participants are too exposed to challenge.

What is the DGCCRF, and what does it do?

The Direction générale de la concurrence, de la consommation et de la répression des fraudes — the DGCCRF — is the administration within the Ministry for the Economy responsible for policing competition, consumer protection and fair trading on the ground. It is the investigative and operational arm that stands behind the Minister's action. Its agents conduct the enquiries, gather the evidence, hear the parties and prepare the files on which a public action for a restrictive practice is founded. When a foreign business first learns that its French practices are under scrutiny, the contact will almost invariably be with the DGCCRF rather than with a court.

The DGCCRF's powers are not confined to preparing court proceedings. Following an adversarial procedure, its agents may enjoin a professional — fixing a reasonable period — to bring itself into conformity with its obligations, to cease any illicit conduct, or to strike out any illicit clause (Art. L 470-1, applied through Art. L 444-6). That injunction may itself be made public. For a defined category of breaches, the DGCCRF may impose an administrative fine directly, without recourse to a court (Art. L 470-2). The administration's own action is subject to a three-year limitation running from the day the breach became known — a shorter period than the five years that governs the civil action.

The administrative fines carry their own architecture of accumulation and proportionality. Where an administrative fine may overlap with a criminal fine for the same facts, the aggregate cannot exceed the highest applicable statutory maximum. But where several administrative sanctions are imposed on the same author for concurrent breaches, they are executed cumulatively, without an overall ceiling save that of proportionality — so that repeated breaches may each attract a fine. This cumulation of administrative sanctions, bounded only by proportionality, has been held compatible with the Constitution (Cons. const., 25 March 2022, no. 2021-984 QPC). A challenge to an administrative sanction is brought not before the commercial courts but before the administrative judge, within two months of notification, without suspensive effect.

The DGCCRF also holds a criminal lever. Where the public prosecution has not yet been set in motion, its officers may propose to the public prosecutor a transaction pénale — a negotiated settlement proportionate to the gravity of the facts (Art. L 490-5) — under which the person concerned performs a defined obligation or pays a sum recovered by the Treasury. If the prosecutor refuses, or the person contests the offence, the prosecution proceeds before the criminal court.

What is the private victim's action, and what can it obtain?

The private action is the ordinary route. The statute confers it on "any person justifying an interest" (Art. L 442-4, I), a formula wider than the direct contracting party alone: the direct victim of the practice, an indirect victim in appropriate circumstances, a professional organisation where the facts harm the collective interest of the profession or the loyalty of competition (Art. L 490-10), and an approved consumer association where the interests in its charge are affected. The action is brought before the specially designated court in whose jurisdiction the commercial harm is suffered.

The private claimant may seek three things. First, the cessation of the practice — an order that the offending conduct stop, which where urgent may be sought from the interim-relief judge (see below). Second, compensation for the loss the practice has caused, which in a restitutionary case may take the form of the return of sums unduly paid, though only up to the amount of the indu. Third — and this is reserved to the victim alone — a declaration that the illicit clause or contract is void.

The reservation of the nullity action to the victim resolved a long-running debate. Before the 2019 reform, several decisions had refused the victim of a significant-imbalance practice the right to have the offending clause struck down, holding that the former Article L 442-6, I opened to it only an action in damages. That position was widely criticised, for it left in place a clause contrary to public order and placed the victim in a worse position than the Minister, who could obtain such a sanction. The reform settled the point: the victim may now have the illicit clause or contract declared void (Art. L 442-4, I). The action is one in nullity — characterised as relative nullity — and is therefore subject to the five-year limitation of Article L 110-4, running, for the victim's action, from the date the contract containing the clause was signed.

What is the Minister's "autonomous public action"?

The centrepiece of the enforcement regime is the action conferred on the Minister for the Economy, the public prosecutor and the President of the Competition Authority (Art. L 442-4, I). Of these, the Minister's action is the one foreign operators most often encounter, and its defining quality is that it is autonomous. The Court of Cassation has held that "the action of the Minister charged with the Economy … which seeks the cessation of the practices … the declaration of nullity of illicit clauses or contracts, the restitution of the undue (répétition de l'indu) and the imposition of a civil fine, is an autonomous action to protect the functioning of the market and of competition, which is not subject to the consent or the presence of the suppliers" (Cass. com., 8 July 2008, no. 07-16.761).

Three consequences follow from that autonomy, each of practical weight for a foreign business. First, the Minister need not obtain the victim's agreement, nor even secure its participation: the action is brought in the general interest, not as the representative of the injured party. Second, because the Minister does not step into the victim's shoes, the failure to inform a supplier of the action causes it no compensable prejudice — the suppliers remaining free to act or to join, and the alleged author remaining free to bring them in (a point confirmed by the case law on the information requirement). Third, when the Minister exercises the autonomous action, it acquires the quality of a party to the proceedings and may, for instance, appeal a judgment that rejected its claim.

The autonomy is tempered by one safeguard. Where the Minister's action seeks to have an illicit clause or contract declared void, the victims must be informed "by any means" of the introduction of the action (Art. L 442-4, I). The Court of Cassation has held that this information requirement is a fin de non-recevoir that may be regularised in the course of the proceedings, even on appeal, if the cause of inadmissibility has disappeared by the time the court rules. Where, by contrast, the action seeks only the cessation of the practice or the imposition of a fine, no information of the suppliers is required.

The Minister's typical demand illustrates the point. Because the victim generally refrains from acting to preserve its future relations, the Minister may itself seek the restitution to the supplier of sums unduly obtained by the distributor, once an unjustified advantage received by the distributor is established. The action thus protects the market by disgorging the fruits of the abuse, whether or not the victim participates.

Why does a foreign arbitration or choice-of-law clause not stop the Minister?

International parties routinely insert an arbitration clause, a foreign jurisdiction clause, or a foreign choice-of-law clause into their French-facing contracts, in the expectation that these will remove any dispute from French courts and French law. Against a private counterpart, that expectation is often, though not always, sound. Against the Minister exercising the autonomous action, it fails at the threshold, for a reason that is structural rather than discretionary.

The Court of Cassation has held that when the Minister exercises the autonomous action, it acts "neither as a party to the contract nor on the basis of it" (Cass. 1re civ., 6 July 2016, no. 15-21.811). Since the Minister is a stranger to the contract, it never consented to any of the contract's procedural stipulations. It follows that arbitration clauses, jurisdiction clauses and choice-of-law clauses are all unenforceable against the Minister, and the same solution holds for the public prosecutor and the President of the Competition Authority. The point has been applied specifically to a clause conferring jurisdiction on a foreign court: such a clause "is unenforceable against the Minister for the Economy exercising its autonomous action to protect the market," the Minister not being a party to the contract and so not having consented to it (CA Paris, pôle 5, ch. 4, 21 June 2017, no. 15/18784).

The consequence for jurisdiction is stark. Whether or not the defendant is domiciled in the European Union, the French court may always be competent when a public authority such as the Minister exercises its autonomous action to sanction a restrictive practice. The ordinary conflict-of-jurisdiction rules, and the private allocations of forum on which they rest, simply do not run against the public authority.

A mandatory pre-litigation conciliation or mediation clause fares no better against the Minister. Although parties may validly agree such a clause between themselves, it should not be enforceable against the public authority, which did not consent to it. Arbitration, for its part, is not excluded as between the private parties merely because the restrictive-practices prohibition is of public order — the Court of Cassation has confirmed that a sufficiently wide arbitration clause is not manifestly inapplicable to a termination claim, and that recourse to arbitration, internal or international, is not excluded merely because mandatory provisions, even an overriding mandatory provision (loi de police), govern the merits (Cass. com., 1 March 2017, no. 15-22.675; Cass. 1re civ., 8 July 2010, no. 09-67.013; Cass. 1re civ., 21 October 2015, no. 14-25.080). But that is a matter between the private parties; it leaves the Minister's action wholly untouched.

The civil fine and its ceilings — how high can it go?

The civil fine is the sanction that gives the public action its deterrent force, and it may be sought only by a public authority. The statute is explicit: only "the Minister charged with the Economy or the public prosecutor may … request the imposition of a civil fine" (Art. L 442-4, II). Persons with an interest to act, and notably the victim, cannot request it; and the text says nothing of the President of the Competition Authority in this respect. The fine's purpose, as the doctrine explains, is to deter economic actors from a cynical calculation — from weighing the cost of an abusive practice against the profit it yields and concluding that the abuse pays.

The fine's ceiling was deliberately reshaped to defeat that calculation. Earlier legislation capped the fine at a flat figure, but several affairs revealed remunerations paid by suppliers for fictitious services so large that the flat cap was derisory by comparison. The legislator therefore adopted a dissuasive mechanism, indexing the ceiling to the advantage obtained and to turnover. The fine now "cannot exceed the highest of the following three amounts":

The court applies whichever of the three is highest, so that the fixed five million euros operates as a floor beneath a ceiling that rises with the advantage obtained or the offender's French turnover. Within that ceiling, the trial judges enjoy a sovereign power to fix the amount of the fine, subject to the Court of Cassation's control of its proportionality (Cass. com., 18 October 2016, no. 15-13.834). The fine is a civil, not a criminal, sanction; but the Constitutional Council has held that it is nonetheless subject to the requirements of Articles 8 and 9 of the 1789 Declaration — the principles of legality of offences and penalties and of the personality of penalties (Cons. const., 13 May 2011, no. 2011-126 QPC).

The personality principle does not shield a corporate reorganisation. It "does not preclude the imposition of a civil fine on the legal person to which the undertaking has been legally transmitted" (Cass. com., 21 January 2014, no. 12-29.166), so that a group cannot escape the fine by transferring the offending business into a new vehicle. The legal person may, moreover, be held jointly and severally liable for a fine imposed on its director (Art. L 490-1).

Which ceiling would bite?

The civil fine may reach the highest of three ceilings. The advantage unduly obtained and the author's French pre-tax turnover determine which ceiling governs. This models only the statutory maximum; the fine actually imposed is fixed by the court within that maximum, in the exercise of its sovereign appreciation and subject to proportionality.

Method: the ceiling is the highest of (i) €5,000,000; (ii) three times the advantage unduly obtained; (iii) 5% of French pre-tax turnover (Art. L 442-4, II). The figure that results is the maximum the fine may not exceed, not the fine itself. Indicative only; not legal advice.

What other remedies accompany the public action — cessation, restitution, nullity, publicity?

The civil fine is the most visible sanction, but it is rarely the only one in play. The public action carries a battery of remedies designed to stop the practice, to strip its gains, and to publicise its condemnation.

Cessation and the "competition référé"

Any person with an interest, the public prosecutor and the Minister — but not the Competition Authority — may ask the court to order the cessation of the restrictive practices (Art. L 442-4, I). In an abrupt-termination case, this may take the form of an order maintaining the commercial relationship for the duration of the missing notice, which may be granted even where the author of the termination has been placed into anticipated dissolution and amicable liquidation (Cass. com., 3 May 2012, no. 10-28.366). In practice the demand to maintain the relationship is brought before the interim-relief judge: the statute expressly provides that "the interim-relief judge may order, if need be under a penalty (astreinte), the cessation of the abusive practices or any other provisional measure" (Art. L 442-4, II). This "competition référé" gives the Minister a rapid lever it would not possess under the ordinary law. The Minister's cessation action remains admissible even where the contested clauses no longer figure in the contracts, the action then seeking their "definitive disappearance."

Restitution of the undue

The public authority may seek the répétition de l'indu — the restitution of sums unduly obtained through the abuse — a remedy that disgorges the fruits of the practice to the supplier even where the supplier itself stays out of the litigation. The restitution is limited to the amount of the indu; establishing that the sums paid were truly undue is the practical crux.

Nullity

The Minister and the prosecutor may, on informing the victims, have illicit clauses or contracts declared void (Art. L 442-4, I). This power long predated the victim's own nullity action and was one of the anomalies the 2019 reform addressed by extending the same power to the victim.

Systematic publicity — "name and shame"

The author of a restrictive practice suffers, in addition, a systematic reputational sanction. The statute provides that the court "systematically orders the publication, dissemination or display of its decision or of an extract of it" according to the modalities it specifies (Art. L 442-4, II). A complementary, optional publicity may also be ordered — insertion of the decision in the management report on the year's operations. The costs of both the systematic and the optional publicity are borne by the person condemned (Art. L 442-4, II). Because the publicity is systematic, it attaches even to first-instance decisions subject to appeal, which raises the practical difficulty that a reputation may be damaged before an appellate court has the chance to overturn the condemnation — a reason to resist provisional enforcement of the publicity measure, or to seek its suspension where its execution would carry manifestly excessive consequences.

Which courts hear these disputes, and why is that a trap?

Restrictive-practices litigation is not heard by the commercial courts at large. The law channels these disputes, at both first instance and on appeal, to a closed list of specially designated courts (Art. L 442-4, III; Art. D 442-3 and its annexes). At first instance, for traders and artisans, the competent courts are the commercial courts of Marseille, Bordeaux, Lille, Fort-de-France, Lyon, Nancy, Paris and Rennes; for persons who are neither traders nor artisans, the tribunaux judiciaires of those same cities. On appeal — including on questions of jurisdiction — the Paris Court of Appeal is the only competent court, whatever the first-instance court seised. The specialisation extends even to interim-relief (référé) proceedings.

The concentration is not a mere rule of territorial competence, and this is where the unwary are caught. Only the courts designated by the law are invested with the power to adjudicate a restrictive-practices claim. Seising a non-designated court, or appealing to a court other than Paris, is therefore met not by a plea of incompetence — an ordinary procedural exception — but by a bar to the action itself, a fin de non-recevoir of public order that must be raised of the court's own motion, and that renders the claim, or the appeal, inadmissible (Cass. com., 24 September 2013, no. 12-21.089). What is at stake is an absence of jurisdictional power, and hence a want of the claimant's right to act, before a non-specialised court.

The Paris Court of Appeal's monopoly on appeal is enforced with particular rigour. It "alone holds the jurisdictional power to rule on decisions rendered by the courts specially designated" to apply the restrictive-practices provisions, "even where that text is invoked before it in the alternative," and the disregard of this rule is sanctioned by a fin de non-recevoir (Cass. com., 31 March 2021, no. 19-14.094). Where a claimant joins a restrictive-practices claim to claims founded on other provisions, the appeal is inadmissible for the whole, and the rule does not yield merely because the party also advanced claims outside Article L 442-1 (Cass. com., 1 December 2021, no. 19-25.938). The Court of Cassation has held this exclusive competence compatible with the right to a fair trial.

One refinement mitigates the severity. To spare the parties the uncertainty of identifying the correct appellate court, the Court of Cassation has clarified that only appeals against decisions rendered by the specially designated first-instance courts go to Paris; appeals against decisions of non-designated courts go, under the ordinary rules, to the court of appeal in whose jurisdiction the first-instance court sits, which must then declare the appeal admissible and, where appropriate, annul the judgment for excess of power (Cass. com., 29 March 2017, no. 15-17.659).

How long is the limitation period, and when does it start?

In commercial matters the action is in principle subject to the five-year limitation of Article L 110-4 of the Commercial Code (Cass. com., 11 May 2010, no. 09-10.797; Cass. com., 11 September 2012, no. 11-17.458). The limitation of an action in liability founded on this regime runs "from the realisation of the loss or from the date on which it was revealed to the victim, if the victim had not previously had knowledge of it." In civil matters, the action is subject in principle to the ordinary five-year limitation of Article 2224 of the Civil Code, running from the day the holder of the right knew, or ought to have known, the facts enabling it to be exercised.

The characterisation of abrupt-termination liability as delictual has practical consequences for the limitation analysis. Because the liability is delictual, the one-year limitation applicable to actions arising from a contract of carriage (Art. L 133-6) has been held not to apply (Cass. com., 11 May 2010, no. 09-10.797). The five-year commercial limitation governs instead, and the bringing of the action does not require the victim to have protested at the moment of the termination (Cass. com., 27 October 2009, no. 08-19.396).

On the starting point, the Court of Cassation has clarified that, under Article 2224 of the Civil Code, the limitation of the liability action runs from the notification of the termination, once the claimant had, at that date, knowledge of the absence of notice and of the resulting loss — without regard to the possibility of a fault that might have justified terminating without notice (Cass. com., 8 July 2020, no. 18-24.441). For the nullity action, the starting point differs according to the claimant: where the significant-imbalance nullity is sought by the Minister, time runs from the date of the first acts of enquiry or the first hearing; where it is sought by the victim, from the date the contract containing the clause was signed.

Can a foreign company be pursued in France?

It frequently can, and by more than one route. The private action against a foreign defendant follows the ordinary conflict-of-jurisdiction rules, which turn on whether the defendant is domiciled in the European Union. Where the defendant is domiciled in a Member State, the Brussels I bis Regulation applies, conferring jurisdiction in principle on the courts of the defendant's domicile (Art. 4), with options of competence that depend on whether the relationship is characterised as contractual or delictual.

That characterisation was transformed by the Court of Justice. In Granarolo, the Court held that an action for damages founded on the abrupt termination of a long-standing commercial relationship is not a matter of tort for the purposes of the Brussels regime "if there existed, between the parties, a tacit contractual relationship," to be established on a body of concordant indicia (CJEU, 14 July 2016, C-196/15). Where such a tacit relationship exists, the action is contractual, and jurisdiction may also lie with the court of the place of performance of the obligation — for the sale of goods, the place of delivery; for services, the place of provision (Cass. com., 20 September 2017, no. 16-14.812). Absent a tacit contractual relationship, the action is delictual, and jurisdiction may also lie with the court of the place where the harmful event occurred. Where the defendant is not domiciled in the Union, the French court applies Article 46 of the Code of Civil Procedure, permitting the claimant to sue, besides at the defendant's domicile, at the place of the harmful event or the place where the loss was suffered — which may be the place of the victim's activity where the loss invoked is the cessation of that activity.

A foreign jurisdiction clause may be effective against the private claimant. The Court of Cassation has held that jurisdiction clauses drafted widely enough to cover all disputes arising from the contractual relations — not merely the contractual obligations — apply to a restrictive-practices claim, "even where mandatory provisions constituting overriding mandatory provisions (lois de police) are applicable to the merits" (Cass. 1re civ., 18 January 2017, no. 15-26.105). But such a clause cannot defeat the specialised-court allocation within France (Cass. com., 1 March 2017, no. 15-22.675), and — decisively — it is unenforceable against the Minister exercising the autonomous action (CA Paris, 21 June 2017, no. 15/18784). Whether or not the defendant is EU-domiciled, the French court may always be competent when a public authority exercises its autonomous action.

Is the public action compatible with the Constitution and the ECHR?

The Minister's autonomous action, and the civil fine it carries, have been tested against both the French Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights, and have survived both challenges — subject to the safeguards already described.

The Constitutional Council held the Minister's action conforming to the Constitution, subject to the requirement that the victims be informed (Cons. const., 13 May 2011, no. 2011-126 QPC). The same decision confirmed that the civil fine, though not a criminal penalty, must respect the requirements of Articles 8 and 9 of the 1789 Declaration — in particular the principle of legality of offences and penalties and the principle of the personality of penalties. The European Court of Human Rights, for its part, held the action compatible with the Convention (Galec v. France, ECtHR, 17 January 2012, no. 51255/08).

The compatibility analysis illuminates the character of the action. Because the Minister acts to defend the economic public order, and not in substitution for the suppliers, the case law holds that the failure to inform a given supplier causes it no compensable prejudice under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention: the suppliers remain free to act or to join the proceedings, and the alleged author remains free to bring them in. The information requirement, where it applies — that is, where nullity is sought — operates as a regularisable bar rather than as a condition whose breach voids the action. And the concentration of appeals in the Paris Court of Appeal has itself been held to respect the right to a fair trial, notwithstanding the procedural rigour of the fin de non-recevoir that enforces it.

What should a foreign company do on receiving a DGCCRF request?

A DGCCRF enquiry is not a routine administrative formality. It is frequently the first stage of a process that can culminate in a public action for a civil fine, an administrative injunction, mandatory publicity, and — in the sharper cases — a criminal settlement proposal. How the enquiry is handled shapes everything that follows, and the early errors are the expensive ones.

Immediate posture

• Treat the enquiry as adversarial from the outset. The DGCCRF's own powers of injunction and administrative fine are exercised after an adversarial procedure; the file it builds is the foundation of any later court action. What is said, produced and admitted at the enquiry stage is difficult to unsay.
• Do not assume a foreign forum or law clause protects you. Against the Minister's autonomous action those clauses are unenforceable, and against a private claimant they may not defeat the French specialised courts. The instinct to invoke the home-country contract is often misplaced here.
• Identify which regime is in play. Abrupt termination, significant imbalance and advantage without consideration are distinct wrongs with distinct evidence; the significant-imbalance cases in particular are typically driven by the Minister rather than the victim.
• Preserve and organise the commercial record — the contracts, orders, invoices, pricing history, correspondence and any advantages granted or received — before responding, so that the response is accurate and consistent with the documents.
• Take French advice before engaging. The three-year administrative limitation, the five-year civil limitation, the specialised-court allocation and the fine ceilings all bear on strategy from the first exchange.

Assessing exposure

The exposure is best mapped against the remedies. Cessation can be ordered quickly, by référé, and can compel the maintenance of a relationship the company wished to end. Restitution disgorges the advantage. The civil fine is measured against the highest of the three ceilings — and where French turnover is large, the 5% ceiling can dwarf the fixed five-million-euro floor. Systematic publicity attaches on condemnation, at the company's expense, and can be the most damaging sanction for a consumer-facing brand. A realistic assessment weighs all of these, not the fine alone.

How do the three enforcement routes fit together in practice?

The three routes — private, public and criminal/administrative — are independent, and they may run in parallel over the same facts. Understanding how they interact is the key to assessing real-world exposure.

For a foreign business, the composite lesson is that no single clause, and no single silence, closes off enforcement. The private claimant may be contained; the Minister will not be. The prudent course is to treat the substantive prohibitions of Article L 442-1 as compliance obligations in their own right, and to engage any DGCCRF enquiry as the serious matter it is.