Sustainable Economy Act. Regulations governing distribution agreements for automobiles and industrial vehicles

1. Description of the Legal Reform
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The Law extends the legal regime governing agency agreements to the distribution agreements of the automobile and industrial vehicle sector. Strictly speaking there is no real extension of the AL regime, but rather the creation of specific regulations, which will be compulsory, for such distribution agreements, in other words, they cannot be modified by an agreement between the manufacturer/importer and the distributor. Any clause whereby the supplier reserves the right to unilaterally amend the essential (?) contents of these agreements is declared invalid, «in particular, the entire range of products and contractual services, the dealer’s business plan, the investments and amortisation period, the fixed and variable remuneration, the product and service prices, the general sale and after-sale conditions, the commercial guidelines and the distributor selection criteria». The law, whose wording leaves a lot to be desired, stipulates that the distributor «shall only be obliged to make those specific investments that are necessary to execute the agreement and which are expressly and individually stated therein or in its amendments. Said investments shall only be made when a period has been established for each of them, wherein it is deemed that they will be amortised». Specific investments are considered to be those that cannot effectively be used for other purposes…