Το στάδιο των διαπραγματεύσεων στις ηλεκτρονικές συμβάσεις

Abstract

The modern legislator has managed to accommodate in a relatively short time the transactional world’s requirements and to consolidate the digital market, creating an appropriate legal framework for its unimpeded function and further development.Among the various legal issues arising in conducting and performing transactions by electronic means, the present thesis focuses on the function and the legal regulation of electronic negotiations. From a practical point of view, the contribution of computer science to transactions is manifested primarily on the communicative process that precedes the conclusion of agreements. Additionally, in modern contract law the pre-contractual phase is being perceived as the foundation of the contractual relationship, decisive to its effectiveness and further evolution. The widespread of the internet has rendered the spontaneous transactional contact among unknown participants possible. Hence, it is of great interest to examine both the legislator’s point of view towards electronic negotiations function and the attributed lawful results to the peculiar transactional relationships that arise.Under this prism, an unbreakable connection between the two thematic axes of the present dissertation is achieved. The legal and economic basis of negotiation procedure is emphasized, in order to analyze the subjection of the electronic pre-contractual phase to the rules of private law. For this purpose, the relative general provisions of the Civil Code, and in particular the art.197-198 C.C. about pre-contractual liability, are scrutinized. Following that, the special restrictions regarding e-commerce and consumer protection are presented as the main body of the communitarian and national legal framework. The basic pre-contractual obligations for “truth”, “information”, and “protection of the counterparty”, resulting from the general principle of bona fide and from usages in industrial or commercial matters, acquire tangible and explicit content conformed to the e-commerce and consumer contracts’ particularities. Taking into consideration the e-transactions’ supranational elements, the prementioned analysis is completed by an examination of matters concerning international jurisdiction and applicable law.Thus, the information technology’s contribution to the contracting procedure is presented not only as a conjunctive consequence of the transactional world’s harmonization to the information era. On the contrary, the deduction of the final conclusions regarding e-negotiations legal evaluation elevates the use of electronic means to a fundamental element for the economical function of contracts in individual and social level.