The pre-contractual duty of information disclosure: the reform of French contract law in the context of contract law reforms in European countries

Abstract

The duty of pre-contractual disclosure, an instrument of negotional willpower guardianship, finds itself fended in several legal systems, and translates as an important means to compensate for any economic-legal imbalance of the party considered most vulnerable, minimizing the informational asymmetry, and enabling the manifestation of negotiating parties informed free will. This paper intends to analyze the changes introduced in French Law, in line with the Obligational Law’s reform movement in others European legal systems, especially the German and the Portuguese, and the differences that remained even after said reform, namely the maintenance of the institute culpa in contrahendo as of out-of-contract legal nature.