France EAA enforcement: civil society takes the lead

When the European Accessibility Act became enforceable on 28 June 2025, most organisations assumed enforcement would come from national regulators, the government bodies auditing websites and issuing warnings, and eventually imposing fines. France demonstrated within months that enforcement does not work that way. Disability organisations, not regulators, filed the first EAA lawsuits we have found. They moved faster, more directly, and with greater legal force than most compliance teams anticipated.

What happened in France, and what the cases still pending mean, is important for any organisation with digital products or services available to consumers in the EU.

What happened and when

• 28 June 2025

  The EAA becomes enforceable across all 27 EU member states. France’s EAA rules sit in its Consumer Code (décret n° 2023-931 of 9 October 2023).

• 7 July 2025

  Two French disability rights organisations send formal legal notices to four major grocery retailers: Auchan, Carrefour, E.Leclerc, and Picard Surgelés. The notices identify specific accessibility failures on their websites and mobile applications that prevent visually impaired users from shopping independently. A response deadline is set for 1 September 2025.

• September 2025

  The retailers’ responses are assessed as inadequate. E.Leclerc’s compliance is reported to have improved from 32% to 50%. That is still well below the legal threshold. The organisations characterise the retailers’ response as showing “a certain indifference regarding respect for the law and the rights of people with disabilities.”

• November 2025

  Emergency injunctions (assignation en référé) are filed against all four retailers, in the courts local to each. The legal basis is the French Consumer Code as amended to transpose the EAA. These are the first EAA-related lawsuits we have found in the seven markets we monitor. The injunctions target both websites and mobile applications and ask the court to order immediate remediation, not vague commitments.

• 5 May 2026

  The Tribunal judiciaire de Lille issues the first EAA court ruling of any kind that we have found. The defendant wins. The court dismisses the case against Auchan E-Commerce, not because the site was accessible (the court explicitly found “strong or major failures across 13 of 19 audited sections”) but because of a conflict between two French laws. France’s 2005 domestic accessibility statute sets a €250 million revenue threshold; Auchan E-Commerce reported €144 million revenue in 2024 and fell below it. The ruling is immediately contested. The disability organisations describe it as “a manifestly erroneous interpretation of the legal texts” and file an appeal to the Court of Appeal of Douai. The threshold argument is also narrow: it has no application to Carrefour (€90 billion global revenue) or E.Leclerc (€60 billion global revenue).

• 4 June 2026

  The Tribunal judiciaire de Caen orders Carrefour France to make its online commerce services fully accessible to people with disabilities. It is the first EAA ruling ordering compliance that we have found. The court gives Carrefour six months to comply, which puts the deadline at 4 December 2026. French press reporting puts the penalty at €500 per day of delay after that date. The figure does not appear in the associations’ own communiqués, so it is reported rather than confirmed. Carrefour did not dispute being subject to the obligation and estimated it had already met 71% of the accessibility criteria. The court rejected that argument explicitly: accessibility is an obligation of result, requiring compliance with 100% of RGAA criteria. In the court’s own words: “Le site de e-commerce concerné ne peut pas être seulement un peu accessible, il doit l’être totalement.” A site cannot be only a little accessible. It must be totally accessible. In Finland, the same obligations are supervised by Traficom, a regulator rather than a court.

• As of 23 September 2026

  E.Leclerc: hearing listed for 22 September 2026 at the Tribunal judiciaire de Créteil; no outcome reported. Picard Surgelés: no confirmed hearing date. Auchan: appeal pending before the Court of Appeal of Douai; no date confirmed.

Why civil society, not regulators

France’s enforcement structure gives disability organisations direct legal standing to bring proceedings under the EAA without waiting for a regulator to act. The emergency injunction procedure (référé) allows courts to demand immediate action when an ongoing situation is found to be discriminatory. It is faster and more direct than standard regulatory enforcement.

This is not unique to France. The EAA requires member states to ensure that enforcement mechanisms exist and are accessible. Across the EU, that means disability organisations, consumer groups, and in some cases individual users can initiate enforcement action independently. Regulatory enforcement is one route. Civil society enforcement is another, and in France it moved first.

The French penalty structure

France’s fine structure under the EAA is different from the Netherlands and Sweden. Rather than a single ceiling, France operates a per-offence model:

• €1,500 per offence for individuals; €7,500 per offence for legal entities
• Repeat offences double to €3,000 and €15,000 respectively
• Alongside the fine, the DGCCRF can order compliance with a daily penalty of up to €3,000, capped at €300,000 in total (article L. 521-1 code de la consommation)

The per-offence structure means that an organisation with multiple inaccessible products, multiple user journeys that fail, or multiple applications could face separate assessments for each. A single website with twenty distinct accessibility failures across login, checkout, account management, and support could face a separate fine for each offence found. The DGCCRF describes its fines as cumulative according to the number of offences found.

What this means for organisations outside France

The French cases matter beyond France for two reasons.

First, any organisation whose digital products or services are available to consumers in France is subject to French EAA enforcement, regardless of where the organisation is headquartered. An Irish online retailer selling to French consumers, a Dutch e-commerce business shipping to France, and a Swedish bank offering consumer banking services in France are in scope in the same way as a French organisation, unless they are microenterprises providing services.

Second, the civil society enforcement model is replicable. Disability organisations in Ireland, the Netherlands, and Sweden have the same legal standing to bring proceedings under their national EAA implementations. The French cases have demonstrated that the mechanism works and that courts will hear them. Other organisations are watching.

What the two rulings mean for 2026 and beyond

France has now produced two EAA court rulings, and together they tell a more complete story than either does alone. The first ruling, issued 5 May 2026 by the Tribunal judiciaire de Lille, went to the defendant, but on a procedural ground (a revenue threshold specific to the entity sued) that the court was explicit has nothing to do with whether the site was accessible. The second ruling, issued 4 June 2026 by the Tribunal judiciaire de Caen, ordered compliance. French press reporting puts the penalty at €500 per day of continued non-compliance after the six-month deadline; the figure does not appear in the associations’ own communiqués. And it was explicit on the standard: accessibility is an obligation of result. 71% conformance is not compliance. 100% of RGAA criteria must be met. The 4 June ruling is not an administrative fine. It is a court order with a daily penalty attached, and a judicial statement that partial conformance is not a defence.

We have found no earlier EAA court order in the seven markets we monitor. It demonstrates that civil society organisations with legal backing can bring proceedings, that courts will hear them, and that the remedy available is an order requiring compliance rather than merely a fine. Such an order can be immediate in its legal effect. The emergency injunction procedure the organisations used is designed for exactly this: situations where an ongoing practice is discriminatory and requires urgent correction.

More broadly, the ruling shows that in France civil society has moved first, alongside the DGCCRF's own controls. That is a different risk profile than Germany (where private Abmahnungen from law firms are the primary mechanism), the Netherlands (where the ACM's own investigations are the primary mechanism), or Sweden (where PTS's own supervision is the primary mechanism). In France, the disability community has been the first to act, and it has shown that the mechanism produces results.

For organisations planning their EAA compliance approach, this means that the question is not only “are we likely to be audited?” It is also “are our products accessible enough that a disability organisation with legal backing would not have grounds to act?” Those are different questions with different answers.