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 — government bodies auditing websites, issuing warnings, and eventually imposing fines. France demonstrated within weeks that enforcement does not work that way. Disability organisations, not regulators, filed the first EAA lawsuits in Europe. They moved faster, more directly, and with greater legal force than most compliance teams anticipated.

Understanding 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 transposes the directive through its national Consumer Code.

• 7 July 2025

  Two French disability rights organisations — ApiDV (association for the visually impaired) and Droit Pluriel, supported by the legal collective Intérêt à Agir — 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% — 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.”

• 12 November 2025

  Emergency injunctions (assignation en référé) are filed before the Tribunal judiciaire de Paris against all four retailers. The legal basis is the French Consumer Code as amended to transpose the EAA. This marks the first EAA-related lawsuits filed in Europe. 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 in the EU — and 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 — the first EAA ruling ordering compliance in Europe. The court gives Carrefour six months to comply, under penalty of €500 per day of delay after that deadline. 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.

• As of June 2026

  E.Leclerc: hearing rescheduled to 22 September 2026 at the Tribunal judiciaire de Créteil. No ruling expected before late autumn 2026. 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
• Systemic non-compliance can result in aggregate penalties reaching €250,000

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 generate twenty separate offence calculations.

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 SaaS company with French customers, a Dutch e-commerce retailer selling to French consumers, and a Swedish FinTech with French users are all in scope.

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. The court attached a financial consequence of €500 per day to every day of continued non-compliance after the six-month deadline. 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.

The ruling is also the first of its kind in Europe. No EAA court order had been issued in any member state before this. It demonstrates that civil society organisations with legal backing can bring proceedings, that courts will hear them, and that the remedy available — an order requiring compliance, not merely a fine — 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 confirms that EAA enforcement in France is driven by civil society rather than a single regulatory authority. That is a different risk profile than Germany (where private Abmahnungen from law firms are the primary mechanism), the Netherlands (where ACM audits and mandatory reporting are the primary mechanism), or Sweden (where PTS inspections and market ban authority are the primary mechanism). In France, the disability community itself is the enforcement agent — and it has now 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.