The regulations on contracts being signed through electronic way and electronic trade are reviewed with amendments and addenda being proposed to the Civil Code, the laws on Trade and Services and Protection of Consumer Rights. The citizen will be more protected with the envisaging regulations in the contractual relations: it will be the party more visible for the party of the contract, the consumer what relations he/she enters while signing the contract. According to the RA Minister of Justice Grigor Minasyan, this will be also a restraining mechanism for protecting the citizens from the unscrupulous entities.
It was noted that the functioning regulations are obsolete, are commented with restriction in the sense of use are not distinct. For example, the cases of contracts being signed through internet websites, various electronic supplements and platforms are not distinctly regulated. At present, the issues are fully also regulated, when while signing a contract the conditions of vital importance are introduced with separate document or with separate reference. They are put on any invisible platform, because of which one party of the contract does not see those hidden conditions and is not informed about them. This package solves the abovementioned, as well as a number of other problems of the sphere of signing the electronic contracts. The Minister noted that the editorial proposals presented to the NA relevant sub-division were accepted by the author, and the initiative was revised.
The proposing regulations were debated in the first reading at February 21 sitting of the NA Standing Committee on State and Legal Affairs.
In her co-report the Committee Deputy Chair Arusyak Julhakyan noted that the proposal refers to the efficiency of the usability of the common conditions of the contract. If making reference to the exemplary conditions being part of inseparable part of the contract with former regulations was sufficient for those conditions being obligatory and applicable, then with proposing provisions they will be an inseparable part of the contract and subject to application, if while signing the contract the possibility of giving consent for getting familiarized in accessible way and fully and with that occasion to its common conditions by the signing person is provided. In case of signing the contracts in electronic way, that consent should be expressed by carrying out distinct action aimed at it.
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During the current period of technological development, in the context of the protection of consumer rights and fair trade rules, the opposition MP Artsvik Minasyan emphasized the definition of more flexible legislation, however, to his assessment, as a result of these amendments, the cases of violating the consumers’ rights especially in the spheres of public services and crediting.
A reference was made to the necessity of debating in detail and improving the legislative regulations in a working order from the first to the second reading.
The Committee endorsed the legislative package.
National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia
