For an obligation to adapt cooperation agreements: (contribution to the study of the evolutionary contract).

Summary The cooperation agreement seems to be affected by a major handicap in our legal system: by its particular nature, this agreement by which the contracting parties undertake to pursue together the realization of a common objective suffers from its inevitable maladjustment. Now, article 1134 of the Civil Code seems to close any door to a revision of the agreements not having been envisaged in the original contract, or accepted subsequently by the whole of the parts, it could seem that except these two last cases of figure, nothing could oblige one of the co-operators to adapt its service to the pursued goal. Such a solution does not, however, satisfy. In the search for what should be the regime of cooperation agreements in the face of maladjustment, a search that requires a position to be taken on the role to be attributed to the economic analysis of the law, one observation is essential: respect for the function of these contracts sometimes requires that their modification be prescribed, with respect for the interests of the parties and, if necessary, for the objectives of social utility assigned to these agreements by competition law. Once the need to give these contracts a certain evolutionary character had been demonstrated, it remained to be seen how it would be received in our positive law today. In spite of appearances, it turns out that the latter already enshrines, in a general way, the adaptability of agreements. In view of this, the search for an appropriate basis for imposing an obligation to adapt cooperation agreements is encouraged from a twofold point of view: first, such an obligation will not completely break with existing law, but will on the contrary be in perfect harmony with it; secondly, specifying the possible bases for the obligation and marking its limits will also mean better control of evolving contracts, the reality of which is finally proving to be inescapable in our legal order.