France's ultra-fast-fashion EPR fees, the durability score and the online ‘made in’ duty

Two instruments, and the date that already passed

Three dates carry almost all of the weight here, and they are easy to mix up. The law: LOI n° 2026-602 of 8 July 2026, "visant à réduire l'impact environnemental de l'industrie textile". The ministry's own timeline records promulgation on 8 July 2026 and publication in the Journal officiel on 9 July 2026; the DILA write-up on service-public dates the publication to 8 July. The implementing order: an arrêté of 24 August 2026 that amends the arrêté of 23 November 2022 — the cahiers des charges of the TLC éco-organismes, the stream for clothing textiles, household linen and footwear — and the ministry's methodology note for it, published on 28 August 2026. The date that has already passed: the penalty applies from 1 September 2026.

What the law did to the éco-contribution

Article 5 of the law amends Art. L. 541-10-27 of the Code de l'environnement, the provision that governs the éco-contribution itself — the money a producer pays the approved éco-organisme in a REP stream. For new textile products, that contribution is now modulated by the number of references placed on the market and the incentive to repair them.

What the order did

Added a sub-paragraph 2.2.3.1 to Annex I of the 2022 TLC cahiers des charges: from 1 September 2026, the financial contributions paid by producers to the éco-organisme are modulated by a penalty tied to industrial and commercial practices, per product type, with the amounts set in a table.

What is still missing

Both thresholds. The number of new references that makes a set of practices "ultra-fast fashion" under the definition in the Code de l'environnement, and what counts as a low incentive to repair, are to be set by décret. service-public says expressly that décrets d'application are awaited to specify certain measures, and the ministry repeats that the criteria identifying the companies concerned still need an implementing text.

What we read, and what we could not

We read the ministry's methodology note in full (PDF, published 28 August 2026), the draft arrêté as published for public consultation on 8 July 2026, the ministry's own page on the law, the DILA article on service-public, and the ADEME REP-portal write-up of 15 September 2026. We could not open Légifrance from here — including the Journal officiel version of the arrêté itself — so the per-item table below is the consultation text, which matches what the ministry's own summary and the French trade press report of the adopted order.

What “mode ultra-express” is

The law does not ban ultra-fast fashion. It defines it, and then attaches consequences. The definition covers the industrial and commercial practices of producers of textiles and of operators of online interfaces, where those practices have the effect of shortening the period of use or the life of the products. Two criteria have to be met cumulatively:

Criterion one

Placing a high number of references of new products on the market.

Criterion two

A low incentive to repair those products.

The products in scope are clothing textiles, footwear, new household linen for private individuals and new textile products for the home. The sale of second-hand products is outside it. Note what is not in the definition: turnover, headcount, or where you are established.

The durability score D, and the 0.8 cut-off

The penalty is not automatic for a brand. It applies to a product whose score D is 0.8 or lower — the wording in the arrêté text is "inférieur ou égal à 0,8", and ADEME's summary renders it as a durability coefficient below 0.8. D is built from two indices, each weighted 50%:

G — breadth of the range

The maximum number of references of new products (remanufactured included) the brand offers on the relevant market segment. Five segments are counted: women, men, children, baby, underwear. The reference sales channel is the brand's own website; if the brand has no online sales of its own, one main channel is chosen. G scores 100% below 1,000 references per segment, 50% at 7,000, 0% above 16,000, and moves linearly between those points.

The default that catches you if you have no IDU

Where a brand is mainly distributed through an online platform, its range is fixed at a default of 100,000 references per segment. The same default applies to a brand sold on a multi-brand site that does not have its own identifiant unique. In other words: no IDU, and the range index is the worst one the method has.

R — incentive to repair

Two components. R1 is the ratio between the average repair cost and a reference sale price — that price is the price including tax, excluding promotions and sales. R1 scores 100% where repair costs less than 33% of the new price, 0% where it costs more than 100%, linear in between, and it is product-specific. R2 is whether the brand offers a repair service labelled by the TLC éco-organisme: 100% if it has at least one such service of its own, 0% if it has none that meets the minimum requirements.

Where small brands get an easier formula

For a brand that is an SME or a micro-enterprise (under 250 staff and either turnover at most €50m or a balance sheet at most €43m), R is simply R1. Only for larger brands is the index computed as 0.66 × R1 + 0.33 × R2. That is the one place in the method where being small is an advantage: you are not scored on running a labelled repair service.

The formula in the text is D = 0,67 + (1,45 − 0,67) × (0,5 × G + 0,5 × R), so D runs from 0.67 to 1.45. Do the arithmetic and the practical shape of the penalty appears: since 0.8 sits only 0.13 above the floor, the penalty needs G + R at or below one third — a very wide range and poor repair economics. And the converse is worth knowing: at G = 100%, which is where any brand with fewer than 1,000 references per segment sits, D cannot fall to 0.8 whatever its repair score is.

The methodology note also fixes the average repair prices used for R1, so you can see which categories are easy to pass:

Read that against the R1 rule and a €9 repair on a category with a €10 average repair price is the difference between scoring 100% and scoring 0% — the threshold is 33% of the new price.

The per-item penalty, category by category

The arrêté puts the amounts directly into the TLC cahiers des charges, per product type, with one column for 2026 and 2027 and then a step each year:

Above that table sits a statutory band in the law itself. Read as a law-firm analysis of Art. L. 541-10-27, the penalty per product is: 25 cents to €12 in 2026, 50 cents to €14 in 2027, 75 cents to €16 in 2028, €1 to €18 in 2029 and €2 to €20 from 2030. service-public's summary gives the same shape, "25 centimes to €12 in 2026 up to €2.20 and €20 in 2030". The order's own amounts therefore sit inside the ceiling, and in some places below the floor its table could reach.

It is not a fine paid to the state

The penalty is set off against (à valoir sur) the financial contribution the producer pays to the approved éco-organisme. It is a write-up inside the EPR scale, not a separate sanction, which is why it is collected through your declaration rather than by an inspector.

The 50% cap

The éco-organismes are required to limit the prime or penalty to 50% of the pre-tax sale price of the product, and service-public states the same for the penalties — notwithstanding the amounts in the statutory band. That cap is the reason a €9 penalty on a very cheap pair of jeans cannot simply be added to the price.

No environmental bonus

A product carrying the penalty cannot receive the environmental-performance primes under Art. L. 541-10-3. For a product that scores badly on durability, that is the second cost: you lose the bonus you might otherwise have claimed on the products you sell that do score well.

The scale to compare it with

ADEME puts the average TLC éco-contribution at 4 cents in 2024, with products ranging from about 2 to 20 cents. Against that a €9 jeans penalty is roughly two orders of magnitude, which is precisely the design: it is meant to be felt.

The online “made in” duty, and the ban from 2027

Two duties apply to the shopfront rather than to the contribution, and both matter more to a small seller than the malus does.

Manufacturing locations, next to the price. Operators of online interfaces that sell or deliver covered ultra-fast-fashion products must display the manufacturing locations of the products sold online. The information has to be brought to the consumer's knowledge clearly and legibly on the digital platform, in characters of a size equal to that of the price indication and close to it. The same provision requires a set of additional messages: encouraging sobriety, re-use, repair, re-use and recycling of the products; the social impact of the product; its impact on the environment and on human health; and the environmental impact of the delivery service offered. The ministry describes the same package as a traceability and display duty for manufacturing locations.

Advertising and promotion, from 1 January 2027. From that date it is prohibited to advertise ultra-fast-fashion products or to promote them directly or indirectly; the same prohibition reaches the brands that produce them. It is also prohibited to use the word "gratuit" in a marketing operation. Influencers may no longer promote them, whether paid or not. The government's own example of indirect promotion covers event sponsorship, product placement in films or series, and positive reviews in the media. The sanction is an administrative fine of €100,000.

One more piece from the same law, easy to miss because it is a tax rule rather than an environmental one: it ends the mécénat tax reduction for donating unsold stock, by amending Article 238 bis of the Code général des impôts.

Does this reach a one-person shop?

Straight answer: the penalty probably does not, and the display and advertising duties do. That asymmetry is the thing to plan around.

The penalty is aimed at range breadth, not at size

There is no de minimis in the texts we read. What protects a small seller is arithmetic: at under 1,000 references per market segment the range index is 100%, and D then cannot fall to the 0.8 cut-off however bad the repair score is. The catch is that this depends on having your own IDU — the note fixes a brand with no identifiant unique at the 100,000-reference default, which is the worst possible range score.

Being an SME or micro-enterprise is written into the method

Below the SME thresholds, R is R1 only. You are not penalised for lacking a repair service labelled by the éco-organisme, and the average repair prices in the note are the only input on that side.

The display duty is not size-graded

If you are an operator of an online interface selling or delivering covered products, the manufacturing-location display and the accompanying messages are required of you as written. Nothing in the summaries we read scales this to turnover.

The advertising ban is absolute from 2027

It is a prohibition, not a fee. If a product or brand falls within the definition once the décrets are made, no advertising and no promotion — including by an influencer you send a parcel to.

Who decides in practice

ADEME's write-up is explicit that the practical application still has to be specified, notably by Refashion, the approved TLC éco-organisme: it will adjust its barème and define how the companies concerned are identified. Until that is published, no small seller can say from the texts alone whether they score 0.8 or lower.

What is EU law, and what is French

These are two layers, and merging them will produce the wrong deadline. Directive (EU) 2025/1892 of 10 September 2025, amending the Waste Framework Directive 2008/98/EC, is the EU layer:

The EU deadline

Art. 22c(14): Member States must ensure that the extended producer responsibility schemes for textile, textile-related and footwear products are established by 17 April 2028.

The EU permission to modulate

Art. 22c(6): where it is appropriate to address ultra-fast and fast-fashion practices, Member States may require producer responsibility organisations to modulate the financial contribution on the basis of producers' practices — the legal hook France is using, at national level, before the deadline.

The EU recital on the same practices

Recital 40 recognises that industrial and commercial practices such as ultra-fast and fast fashion "influence the length of use of the product and the likelihood of a product becoming waste", and that they are often based on market segmentation.

What is French only

Everything on this page that has a euro amount, a durability score, a font-size rule, an advertising ban or a €100,000 fine. The directive sets a floor and a deadline; the penalty scale, the 0.8 cut-off and the 1 January 2027 prohibition are national French law, and they apply to you on the French market regardless of where you are established.

What we could not read, and what is still open

We would rather list our gaps than fill them by inference.

The adopted arrêté in the Journal officiel

Not read. Légifrance refused us. The table above is from the consultation text published on 8 July 2026; the ministry's note names the arrêté as du 24 août 2026, and French trade and legal reporting of the adopted text repeats the same per-item numbers, which is why we publish them with that label rather than as a quotation from the Journal officiel.

Footwear and household linen

ADEME says the penalty does not cover household linen and footwear; the consultation table lists footwear at €0.50. One of the two has to give, and we cannot yet say which.

Two small numeric divergences

service-public gives the 2030 band as "€2.20 to €20" while the law-firm reading and the order's own table start at €2.00; and service-public frames the introduction of the amounts as 2026 whereas ADEME writes "in 2027 the penalty may run from €0.50 to €12 per item". We have kept both versions rather than choose.

The two thresholds

The number of new references and the low incentive to repair that define ultra-fast fashion for the purposes of the law itself are still to be set by décret. Until then, the definition is real but not fully measurable by a seller.

The identification route

Refashion has to adjust its barème and define how affected companies are identified. Nothing in the texts we read tells a seller how they will be asked to evidence their range breadth or their repair offer.

France's EU notification

We have seen it stated that France's notification of the draft order cites recital 40 of the Waste Framework Directive. We could not open the notification, so we have cited the recital directly and left the claim about the notification out.

Known traps

Sources

French official sources first, then the law-firm reading, then the EU layer. Where a figure rests on a secondary source or on a consultation draft, the body text says so.

1. Ministère de la Transition écologique — “Réduire l'impact environnemental de l'industrie textile : loi du 8 juillet 2026” Official. Source for the legislative timeline (deposit 30 January 2024, final adoption 24 and 29 June 2026, promulgation 8 July 2026, publication in the Journal officiel 9 July 2026), the reference LOI n° 2026-602 du 8 juillet 2026, the definition's criteria, the malus of up to 50% of the price from 1 September 2026, the advertising ban from 1 January 2027 including influencers, the traceability and manufacturing-location duty, and the statement that décrets d'application are still needed
2. DILA / service-public.fr — “La loi « anti fast-fashion » impose un nouveau cadre de vente”, published 20 July 2026 Official. The most detailed official summary we found. Source for the two cumulative criteria, the product scope (clothing textiles, footwear, new household linen for private individuals, new home textiles; second-hand excluded), the 1 September 2026 modulation and the amounts “25 centimes to €12 in 2026 up to €2.20 and €20 in 2030”, the 50% of the pre-tax sale price cap, the loss of environmental-performance primes, the manufacturing-location display in characters the same size as the price and next to it, the accompanying messages, the 1 January 2027 advertising ban, the ban on the word “gratuit”, the influencer ban and the €100,000 administrative fine
3. Ministère de la Transition écologique — “Note relative aux modalités de calcul de la pénalité” for the arrêté of 24 August 2026 Official. Read in full. Source for the two indices G and R at 50% each, the five market segments, the brand website as the reference channel, the 1,000 / 7,000 / 16,000 references points, the 100,000-reference default for brands mainly distributed on an online platform and for brands without an identifiant unique, the R1 rule (100% below 33% of the new price, 0% above 100%), R2 and the labelled repair service, the SME/micro-enterprise rule R = R1 and the formula 0.66 × R1 + 0.33 × R2 above it, and the average repair price table
4. Projet d'arrêté modifiant l'arrêté du 23 novembre 2022 (TLC cahiers des charges), public consultation, opened 8 July 2026 Official draft, read in full. The source of the per-item table in this page: the new sub-paragraph 2.2.3.1 applying from 1 September 2026, the condition “produit dont le score D est inférieur ou égal à 0,8”, the amounts for the twelve product types across 2026–2027, 2028, 2029 and from 2030, and the formula D = 0,67 + (1,45 − 0,67) × (0,5 × G + 0,5 × R). The consultation text, not the adopted text
5. ADEME — “Textile : l'ultra fast-fashion pénalisée”, filières REP portal, published 15 September 2026 Official. Source for the penalty being part of the TLC stream and taking the form of a modulation of the éco-contribution, the range €0.50 to €12 per item (given as 2027) and €2 to €19.50 from 2030, the comparison figure of an average TLC éco-contribution of 4 cents in 2024 (2 to 20 cents by product), the methodology note of 28 August 2026, the durability coefficient below 0.8, the exclusion of household linen and footwear, the voluntary status of environmental display since the décret and arrêté of 1 October 2025, and that Refashion still has to adjust its barème and define how affected companies are identified
6. Cabinet Gossement Avocats — “Fast-fashion (mode ultra express) : le Gouvernement prépare l'entrée en vigueur, le 1er septembre 2026, du malus sur les vêtements non durables”, 13 July 2026 Law-firm analysis — a secondary source, used for what it reports of the statute: Article 5 of the law amending Art. L. 541-10-27, the annual bands €0.25–€12 (2026), €0.50–€14 (2027), €0.75–€16 (2028), €1–€18 (2029), €2–€20 from 2030, that the penalty is “à valoir sur” the contribution paid to the éco-organisme, that products carrying it cannot receive the primes of Art. L. 541-10-3, and that the éco-organismes must limit the prime or penalty to 50% of the pre-tax sale price. We have not read the law on Légifrance
7. Directive (EU) 2025/1892 of 10 September 2025 amending Directive 2008/98/EC on waste — EUR-Lex (OJ L, 2025/1892, 26.9.2025) Read in full. Source for recital 40 on ultra-fast and fast-fashion practices and the length of use of products, for Art. 22c(6) permitting member states to require the modulation of producer contributions to address ultra-fast and fast-fashion practices, and for Art. 22c(14): the EPR schemes for textile, textile-related and footwear products must be established by 17 April 2028
8. KontorBund — the France desk, section “Textiles are a third French stream” Our own page, dated 8 October 2026, on the same statute's packaging and mandataire side — including Art. L. 541-10-9-1, the French representative created by this law and compulsory since 10 July 2026

Help us keep this page honest

Two things would close the gaps above, and both come from someone doing this for real: a copy of the adopted arrêté as published in the Journal officiel, and a look at what a foreign seller's éco-organisme declaration now asks about range breadth and repair. If you have either, send it to us and we will correct the page date.