Week of 29 September to 5 October 2026
Legislative, regulatory and case-law review
Legislation
The past week saw a procedural reform directly affecting commercial lease litigation take effect on 1 October 2026, together with two publications by regulators.
Decree No. 2026-683 of 27 July 2026 simplifying various procedures before the commercial rent judge. The decree reforms how written submissions are notified between the parties once the judge has been seized. Notification of the submission preceding referral to the judge remains subject to registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt, but submissions after referral must now be notified under the rules applying between lawyers, in practice electronically through the RPVA (the French bar’s private virtual network), except for a defendant without a lawyer, who is still served by bailiff. Notification by registered letter after referral is therefore abolished. Entry into force: 1 October 2026, including for proceedings pending on that date. For practitioners, the immediate task is to secure the procedural timetable of actions to set or review commercial rent, whether already brought or yet to be brought, by switching straight away from registered letter to RPVA for every submission after referral.
Opinion No. 26-A-06 of 1 October 2026 of the Autorité de la concurrence, issued at the request of the National Assembly’s cultural affairs and education committee, on competition in artistic representation for film and television. The Authority notes strong market concentration around two dominant agencies (Adéquat/Artmedia and UBBA), network effects and bottlenecks at the casting stage, and recommends in particular encouraging direct matching between artists and producers, as well as generalising written agency contracts and periodic accounting to artists. The opinion has no binding force and does not in itself change the law, but it points to a likely regulatory update of the cap on talent agents’ commissions, which the Authority invites the government to revise.
First AMF report on major ICT incidents reported in 2025 under DORA (Regulation (EU) 2022/2554 on digital operational resilience for the financial sector, applicable since 17 January 2025). Portfolio management companies reported 31 major ICT incidents to the AMF for 2025; at European level, the three supervisory authorities (ESMA, EBA, EIOPA) recorded 3,383 major incidents, only 10% of which related to cybersecurity as such, most stemming from system failures and nearly a third from third-party providers. The report highlights how hard it is for management companies to obtain contracts from global IT providers that meet DORA’s contractual requirements (audit, exit and incident-notification clauses), some providers even disputing their designation as a critical ICT third-party provider. Financial entities subject to DORA should review their agreements with IT providers in the light of these findings without waiting.
In addition, JORF No. 0229 of 1 October 2026 publishes Decree No. 2026-908 and the order of 24 September 2026 renewing the Conseil national du commerce, with no direct normative impact on business law.
Case law
No judgment of the commercial, financial and economic chamber of the Cour de cassation handed down this week calls for particular mention. The judgment of 23 September 2026, however, which falls just before the period covered, drew most of the week’s academic commentary and deserves mention for that reason.
Cass. com., 23 September 2026, No. 25-10.066, published in the Bulletin (Towercast/TDF). The Cour de cassation clarifies the role of the appellate court when the Paris Court of Appeal annuls a no-case decision of the Autorité de la concurrence, in a case concerning TDF’s acquisition of Itas Tim (digital terrestrial television broadcasting), a transaction below the merger notification thresholds but pursued as an abuse of a dominant position. Having annulled the no-case decision, the court of appeal cannot refer the investigation to the Authority’s services alone while keeping jurisdiction to rule on the merits: it must choose between investigating the case itself, using where necessary the additional investigative powers under Articles 143 et seq. of the Code of Civil Procedure, or relinquishing the case entirely to the Autorité de la concurrence, which then investigates afresh and decides. The hybrid route of steering the Authority’s investigation without relinquishing the case is closed and amounts to an excess of power. The Court quashes in part without referral and itself orders the court of appeal to relinquish the case to the Authority, on the basis of Article L. 464-8 of the Commercial Code.
The ruling is of direct interest to practitioners of anticompetitive practices litigation and of below-threshold merger control (in line with the CJEU’s Towercast case law on ex post review, under Article 102 TFEU, of non-notifiable transactions): it makes clear that an appeal against a decision of the Autorité de la concurrence annulled for insufficient investigation does not allow the court of appeal to keep control of an investigation it is not conducting itself, and puts the Authority back at the centre of the decision-making process when the investigation has to be resumed.
The firm advises on French business law, including commercial relationships and competition disputes.
Previous edition: Weekly Digest: Business Law (21-27 September 2026)
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