Many Irish businesses engage self-employed sales representatives/agents to act as a conduit for selling their goods to third parties throughout Europe.  This enables them to take advantage of an agent’s local knowledge or existing trade connections. In so doing, they need to be aware of the fact that for over a decade, agents who are deemed to be “commercial agents” (as distinct from distributors)  enjoy benefits arising not only from the specific terms of the written agency contract but enjoy the benefit of the provisions of the European Communities (Commercial Agents) Regulations 1994 and 1997 (the “Regulations”).

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