Legal Regulation of Franchising in the Netherlands

Franchising is one of the most common ways of doing business, having a wide range of applications and affecting various aspects of life. The international expansion of franchising relations encourages legislators from different countries to reconsider the models of their legal regulation. The Netherlands has followed the path of legislative consolidation of franchise relations, to a greater extent, giving them an imperative character. The purpose of the research is to identify the key aspects of franchising regulation in the Netherlands, its stages of reform: from self-regulation to the adoption of a special law on franchising. The purpose of the scientific research determines its tasks: to reveal the stages of reforming the regulation of franchising relations and their content; to consider the conceptual apparatus according to the Dutch Franchise Code and the Franchise Law; to determine the legal status of franchising participants and the specifics of their relationships; to analyze the content of the pre-contractual and post-contractual stages of franchising as the main directions of regulation of this market segment.

The practical significance of this study lies in studying the experience of legal regulation of franchise relations, its individual elements, identifying positive and negative aspects of their enforcement. The main conclusions drawn in this article can be used in the framework of improving Russian legislation, and, in particular, Chapter 54 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. Firstly, it has been established that the regulation of declarative norms of franchise relations by various associations of a national and international nature in the Netherlands has a complex system and does not fully protect the rights and interests of their participants. Secondly, it was revealed that the regulation of franchise relations based solely on the general provisions of contract law is reduced to the application of general legal principles of reasonableness and fairness, which, in the context of market transformation, creates ambiguity in law enforcement practice. Thirdly, it is shown that the legislator of the Netherlands took the path of refusing to regulate the main part of contractual relations, fixing provisions relating only to various stages of franchising, which generally corresponds to world practice.

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