Last year’s amendment to the Civil Code (implemented by Act No. 56/2006 Coll., amending Act No. 256/2004 Coll., on Business on the Capital Market, as amended, and other related acts) brought, from the perspective of traders in the internet environment, certain interesting additions and clarifications in relation to the legal issues of withdrawal from a consumer contract. This concerns withdrawal from a consumer contract in the conclusion of which means of distance communication (internet) were used.

In the provision of Section 53(7) of the Civil Code it was added, somewhat redundantly, that the consumer has the right to withdraw from a consumer contract “without stating a reason and without any penalty”. This fact already followed under the previous legal regulation from the very nature of the institute of withdrawal from a consumer contract and the practical significance of this addition is therefore entirely insignificant.

From a legislative-technical perspective, on the other hand, the addition to the Civil Code of the provision of Section 53(10), which clarified issues that were quite often disputed in practice, can be evaluated positively. The provision of Section 53(10) of the Civil Code newly states that if the consumer exercises the right to withdraw from the contract, the “supplier has the right only to reimbursement of actually incurred costs associated with the return of goods. At the same time, the supplier is obliged to return to the consumer the amounts paid no later than 30 days from withdrawal.” From the first sentence of this provision there now explicitly follows the supplier’s entitlement to deduct from the amount returned to the consumer the actually incurred costs associated with the return of goods. The question of what may be considered actually incurred costs associated with the return of goods will need to be assessed separately in each specific case. By the second sentence of the cited provision, on the contrary, a statutory period for the return of the amount paid by the consumer on the basis of the contract, which expired by withdrawal from the contract by the consumer pursuant to Section 53(7) of the Civil Code, was established. Before the adoption of the above-mentioned amendment, this period was not expressly regulated, and the supplier was thus obliged to satisfy the debt on the first day after being requested by the creditor to perform (Section 563 of the Civil Code).

In conclusion, we briefly mention that the very definition of a consumer contract was brought into compliance with EC law. Since the entry into force of the amendment in question, it is thus entirely clear that the provisions of the Civil Code on consumer contracts apply to all contracts concluded between a supplier and a consumer (not therefore only to contracts regulated in Part Eight of the Civil Code). This fact is significant particularly for all entrepreneurs who, having regard to the nature of their activities, have hitherto not considered their contracts concluded with consumers to be consumer contracts within the meaning of Section 52 et seq. of the Civil Code.

This text was translated from Czech to English using an AI translator.