Terms of Service
In contrast to an individual agreement , general terms and conditions (abbreviated GTC ) are all pre-formulated contractual conditions for a large number of contracts that one contracting party (the user) provides to the other contracting party when concluding a contract ( Section 305 (1) sentence 1 BGB).
Legal regulation in Europe
The rules on general terms and conditions originally developed in the German General Terms and Conditions Act were largely adopted into European Community law as EC Directive 93/13. This guideline obliges the member states to enact certain legal norms that protect consumers from unfair terms and conditions. In all EU countries , consumers can therefore expect that entrepreneurs as users of general terms and conditions will in principle have similar (albeit by no means identical) restrictions as in Germany. A new EU regulation that should lead to a complete standardization of the general terms and conditions law (so-called maximum harmonization) is currently being prepared.
On June 17, 2011, after decades of dispute in legal doctrine and politics, Switzerland decided on a solution that was basically comparable to the European regulation. Article 8 of the Federal Act against Unfair Competition (UWG) has been revised accordingly.
Legal situation in individual countries
For the legal situation in individual countries, see
Web links
- Jurisprudence on § 305 BGB
- European Consumer Center Germany: Unfair contract terms. Retrieved February 21, 2017.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Directive 93/13 / EEC (PDF) of the Council of 5 April 1993 on unfair terms in consumer contracts
- ↑ Final voting text of June 17, 2011 (PDF; 96 kB) and on this, for example, Andreas Heinemann, Revision of the UWG - Summer Session 2011 (PDF; 29 kB)