The right to reduce consideration due to defective performance is regulated in the Greek Civil Code (GCC), or in special laws outside the GCC, fragmentedly, i.e., for specific types of contracts. The buyer in a sale, the lessee in a lease, and the employer in a contract for work have the right to reduce their consideration if the sold item, the leased property, or the work exhibits actual defects. In contrast, the GCC does not provide a general right to reduce the owed consideration for defective performance in all reciprocal contracts. Thus, for a large portion of contracts concluded on a daily basis, the creditor who receives defective performance is ultimately limited to a claim for damages, which often does not arise at all in the absence of loss. In such cases, the creditor effectively pays for a performance inferior to that agreed upon. The issue arises in a characteristic way in contracts for the provision of independent services, when the level of services provided is lower than that agreed upon, but the creditor has suffered no loss as a result. In the present study, it is proposed that the law be further developed to recognize a general right to reduce owed consideration due to defective performance for all reciprocal contracts, including contracts for the provision of independent services. This right is dispositive, independent of the debtor’s fault and of any loss suffered by the creditor. It aims to restore the equivalence of performance and consideration disturbed by defective performance and is founded by analogy both on the specifically regulated cases of reduction and on the (partial) release of the creditor from the obligation to provide consideration in cases of partial impossibility of performance.
The following is the full study as published in the legal journal Civil Law Applications