Legal Insights

Law No. 2021-1104 of August 22, 2021 on combating climate change and strengthening resilience to its effects, adopted on July 20, 2021 (the “Climate and Resilience Law”), was promulgated on August 24, 2021. Its provisions are inspired by the proposals of the Citizens’ Climate Convention. The final text includes 305 Articles in 8 Titles. Some provisions came into force as soon as the Climate and Resilience Law was promulgated, while other measures will apply in 2022, 2023, 2025, up to 2034.

The article provides a focus on the new developments in corporate law.

Parent companies are often asked to guarantee the commitments of their subsidiaries towards third parties. The guarantee can take various forms, but the most frequently used ones are the joint and several guarantee (cautionnement), the independent guarantee (garantie autonome) and the letter of intent (lettre d’intention).

The conditions of validity of a guarantee will vary depending on the type of company issuing the guarantee, i.e., limited liability company or unlimited liability company. Furthermore, joint-stock companies are specific in that the prior authorization of the board of directors, or supervisory board as the case may be, is required for the granting of any sureties, endorsements and guarantees. Other limitations may result from the nature of the guarantee itself.

In a ruling dated December 15, 2021, the Cour de Cassation (French Supreme Court) overturned the decision of a Court of Appeals that had awarded an employee compensation for dismissal without real and serious cause in excess of the so-called “Macron scale”.

Since the publication of the Ordinances of September 22, 2017 which introduced minimum and maximum amounts of compensation that can be awarded for a dismissal held without real and serious cause, French courts have dealt with numerous attempts to have this scale declared illegal, in particular the compensation ceilings determined according to the employee’s seniority within the company at the date of the termination of his/her employment contract.

As the reform of French legal provisions governing security interests is about to come into force, the Legal High Committee for Financial Markets of Paris has just published a report on the pledge of financial securities in the European Union.

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.

The employment contract of a part-time employee must fix the weekly or monthly distribution of working hours, failing which the part-time contract is to be reclassified as a full-time one.

In a decision dated November 17, 2021, the Cour de Cassation (French Supreme Court) strictly applied the provisions of Article L.3123-6 of the French Labor Code that lists the mandatory information to be included in a part-time employment contract.