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The directive is the same across the EU. Who enforces it, what they can fine you, and how a complaint reaches you are not. Here is how it works in France.
Loi n° 2023-171, Ordonnance n° 2023-859 and Décret n° 2023-931
Article 16 of Law no. 2023-171 of 9 March 2023 (the DDADUE law) carried the transposition, completed by Ordinance no. 2023-859 of 6 September 2023 and Decree no. 2023-931 of 9 October 2023, which set out the covered services, the technical requirements and the control regime.
Read the official source →DGCCRF — Direction générale de la concurrence, de la consommation et de la répression des fraudes
Lead authority, working alongside sector regulators that each cover their own domain.
Official site →Control is distributed across several sectoral authorities. The supervising authority issues a formal notice (mise en demeure) giving you a deadline to comply, and only then may impose a financial penalty.
Where a formal notice is not complied with, the supervising authority may impose an administrative fine of up to €50,000.
Most member states point at EN 301 549 and leave you to work out what that means in practice. France publishes the RGAA — Référentiel Général d'Amélioration de l'Accessibilité — which turns the standard into a defined list of verifiable tests. That is unusual and useful: it means a French audit produces a result that maps onto something a French regulator already recognises, rather than a generic WCAG report you then have to translate into their language.
Scope, the microenterprise exemption and the transitional date for existing contracts come from the directive itself and are the same in France as everywhere else — they are set out once here.
Whichever authority above has competence over you, the first question they ask is the same: what is on the page, and can a person using assistive technology get through it. An automated scan answers the first half in about a minute and tells you how large the problem is before anyone else measures it for you.
National details verified against official sources on 2026-08-05. Enforcement practice changes; where a figure matters to a decision you are making, confirm it with the authority named above. FixMyWeb is not a law firm and this page is not legal advice.