Details about Léko

Packaging licensing in France -
obligatory also for online distributors!

In France, distributors of household packaging are obliged to join a state-approved Producer Responsibility Organization (PRO) to fulfil his legal obligation within the framework of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR).

Everyone, who sells their product in France, is subject to French licensing obligation. Because this is where their packaging is “placed on the market”.

This means that all packaging quantities placed on the French market must be reported annually to an approved PRO and a fee must be paid. With the producers' fee, the PROs organize the collection, sorting and recycling of all packaging. This obligation also applies to online and mail-order distributors who do not have their own site in France. As soon as they sell products to a customer in France, the licensing obligation applies to them. There is no de minimis limit.

Mail-order and online distributors who supply to private consumers in France have to consider the following facts:

If they purchase products from a manufacturer in the domestic market and resell them in the same packaging, they only have to license additionally used shipping packaging in the domestic market. However, if they ship the same products to consumers in France, they are considered to place all packaging on the market there, i.e. both sales and shipping packaging.