5 Contracts harmful to third persons and society in general

A ground on which a contract may be invalidated, even though it was freely agreed between two equal parties, is that it (or more often the performance of the obligation under it) would have a seriously harmful effect on third persons or society. Thus contracts which are illegal or contrary to public policy in this sense are invalid. (Within the framework of the EU a common example is contracts which infringe the competition articles of the Treaty.) The DCFR does not spell out when a contract is contrary to public policy in this sense, because that is a matter for law outside the scope of the DCFR — the law of competition or the criminal law of the Member State where the relevant performance takes place. However the fact that a contract might harm particular third persons or society at large is clearly a ground on which the legislator should consider invalidating it.