A Contract for Rendering Paid Services in the Civil Law of Russia and France

The paper provides a comparative legal research on the regulation of relations for rendering paid services under civil laws of Russia and France. The authors note the significant influence of Roman private law on the formation of legal regulation of the relations under consideration in France. The paper explores the problems of differentiating legal regimes of works and services, as well as the admissibility of their convergence. It also analyzes the possibility of involving third parties in the performance of a contract for rendering paid services and pecularities of its termination, including termination in the case of impossibility of execution. The relevance of the research is explained by the fact that Russian legislation and law enforcement practice lack comprehensive criteria for differentiating between works and services, which affects the legal qualification of relations under consideration. In order to find a solution to this problem and ways to improve the quality of legal regulation of relations of providing paid services, the authors turn to the study of the French law and order. The authors come to the conclusion that French legislation allows for the convergence of legal and economic concepts of services. This approach makes it possible to combine into a special group all known contracts related to useful economic activity in favor of the customer, as well as to approach the issue of interrelation between the contract for rendering paid services and the works contracts. The analysis of the concept and legal regime of works and services allows us to distinguish two features — legal and factual — inherent in the works contract and paid services contract. Within the framework of specifics of the termination of the paid services contract, the authors investigate three problems: unilateral refusal to perform the contract, termination of the contract in the event of the death of the parties and the impossibility of its execution.

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