Legislative Advances in Argentine Senate: Consumer Protection Law, and Civil and Commercial Procedural Code

The legislative initiatives to reform Consumer Protection Law No 24,240 and the Argentine Civil and Commercial Procedural Code continue to progress as the projects were submitted before the Argentine Senate. These initiatives share the aim of promoting a total modification of existing laws to adapt them to the Argentine Civil and Commercial Code, although they contain a considerable part of the existing legislation.

1. Consumer Protection Law. 

The Consumer Protection Law project was first drafted mid-2017 by a commission of jurists, first at the Argentine Consumer Protection Direction’s headquarters, and then within the scope of the Justice 2020 program of the Argentine Ministry of Justice and Human Rights.

In December 2018, the text was taken to the Argentine Ministers of Justice and Human Rights, Production and Labor, and then submitted to the Federal Council for Consumers. Since then, the project has been submitted to different instances of public debate which have impacted on its wording.

On August 29, the project was submitted to the Argentine Senate as No 2576/19 and sent to the Rights and Guarantees and Justice and Criminal Matters commissions, which have already begun to treat it. The extensive public exposure that this project has had appears to be key to its steady advance in the Argentine Senate.  

2. Argentine Civil and Commercial Procedural Code.

The reform proposal to the procedural code has followed a different path but was also widely circulated before it was submitted to the Argentine Congress. It was based on the work of a group of experts that was appointed by a drafting committee under the Justice 2020 program. In May 2017 the document “Bases for the Civil and Commercial Procedural Reform” was published, which contained a series of guiding principles and procedural structures that were intended to transform the current slow and inefficient procedural system – to a more agile, simpler and accessible one.

This document was analyzed by the legal community in town hall meetings and events held throughout the country. Furthermore, this protocol, named “Reform and Updating of the Argentine Civil and Commercial Procedural Code, was tested by more than 400 judges from the Province of Buenos Aires and other Provinces.