Citeo packaging EPR registration in France (2026)
Checked 2026-07.
Checked 2026-07: any business shipping packaged products to consumers in France — from anywhere in the world — must join an approved eco-organism such as Citeo for its household packaging, obtain the ADEME unique identifier (UIN, also called IDU), pay an annual eco-contribution and carry the Triman mark plus Info-tri sorting instructions on the packaging. There is no minimum volume: the first parcel triggers the obligation, and since January 2022 Amazon enforces it by paying eco-contributions on your behalf and debiting your account if you don't provide a valid UIN.
Lovat handles this registration and the ongoing filings for you — Citeo sign-up, the ADEME UIN and the annual packaging declarations in one service.
Let Lovat handle your French packaging EPRLovat is a paid compliance service and this is an affiliate link — we may earn a commission if you sign up through it, at no extra cost to you. It does not change what this guide recommends.
| Item | When | Cost or exposure (checked 2026-07) |
|---|---|---|
| Citeo membership + ADEME UIN | Before your first packaged sale to France; UIN issued in days to ~3 weeks | Sign-up free to cheap (€0-150 range); the UIN itself carries no government fee |
| Annual eco-contribution | Declared yearly for the prior calendar year; window typically closes end of February | Hybrid per-unit + per-kg by material: indicative 2026 rates ~€0.04/kg (glass) to >€1/kg (multi-layer plastics), ±10-100% eco-modulation |
| Small-producer forfait | If you place fewer than 10,000 consumer sales units per year | €80 ex-VAT flat declaration; €80 ex-VAT is also the minimum invoice |
| Triman + Info-tri artwork | On all household packaging (stock sell-through ended 9 March 2023) | Design/print cost only (Citeo generates the Info-tri free); fines up to €3,000 (individuals) / €15,000 (companies) per violation |
| Selling on Amazon without a UIN | Enforced since January 2022 (French law No. 2020-105) | Amazon files declarations with default values, pays eco-contributions on your behalf and debits your account — or you must stop selling to French addresses |
Who is obligated: any seller shipping packaged goods to French consumers
France's packaging EPR sits under the anti-waste law for a circular economy (loi AGEC, Law No. 2020-105 of 10 February 2020). For household packaging the dominant producer responsibility organisation is Citeo, which runs the household packaging and graphic papers streams; its subsidiary Adelphe serves wine, spirits and pharma, and Léko is a smaller approved alternative. Citeo's own membership page is blunt about scope: producers whose products are packaged under their brand, importers reselling packaged goods in France, retailers who add service or shipping packaging, and marketplaces whose third-party sellers haven't declared are all obligated — regardless of the volume of packaging. As soon as you place any packaging on the French market, you have to join.
The part that catches cross-border ecommerce sellers is that you don't need a French entity, French warehouse or French manufacturing to be the producer. If you pack an order in Spain, Poland, the UK or China and mail it to a French household, French law treats you as the producer of both the product packaging you imported and the shipment packaging you filled — the box, the mailer, the void fill and the tape. Ecommerce shipping packaging that ends up with private households counts as household packaging, so a Shopify or Amazon seller shipping parcels into France is in exactly the same legal position as a French supermarket brand.
There is no de minimis. Unlike VAT distance-selling thresholds, packaging EPR in France starts at unit one, and Lovat's country guide makes the same point: registration is due before the first sale, with no minimum sales threshold. The practical consequence: if France is on your shipping matrix at all, the registration belongs on your launch checklist, not on your someday list.
How to register with Citeo and get your ADEME UIN, step by step
Step 1 — join Citeo online at clients.citeo.com. You sign an adhesion contract per stream (household packaging, and graphic papers if you also place printed matter). Joining is quick and the sign-up itself is free to cheap — Lovat's cross-country comparison puts French registration fees at 0 to 150 euros, and there is no separate government fee for the identifier.
Step 2 — receive your unique identifier from ADEME. Citeo registers you in SYDEREP, the French environment agency's national EPR register, and ADEME issues your identifiant unique (UIN/IDU) — Citeo says within days, ADEME's own pages quote one to three weeks. The UIN is a 13-character alphanumeric code starting with FR, and it is issued per EPR stream: packaging falls under the household packaging and graphic papers stream (EMPAP), and if you also trigger other French EPR streams (electronics, textiles, furniture, toys...) each one gets its own UIN. Anyone can verify a UIN in the public producer search on syderep.ademe.fr — which is exactly how marketplaces and competitors check you.
Step 3 — display the UIN. French rules require the identifier to appear in your general terms and conditions and other contractual documents; in practice sellers put it in their CGV/terms page and legal notice. Step 4 — hand the UIN to every marketplace you sell on (in Amazon's case via the compliance section of Seller Central), because platforms are legally on the hook for you otherwise. Step 5 — declare annually: each year you report the packaging you placed on the French market the previous calendar year. Citeo offers three declaration routes — a flat-rate forfait for small producers, a simplified declaration by product family, and a detailed declaration by material and weight — plus a contribution simulator and a free Info-tri generator for the labelling side.
What French packaging EPR costs (honest ranges, checked 2026-07)
The Citeo eco-contribution is a hybrid. Per Citeo's rates page, your contribution for household packaging depends on the number of packaged products (consumer sales units, CSUs) you place on the French market per year, combined with a weight-based tariff per material. For the 2026 barème the weight component represents roughly 75 to 80 percent of the bill and the per-unit component — now split into two parts differentiated across six business sectors — roughly 20 to 25 percent. The exact rate grid is published as a download on citeo.com; the figures below are indicative planning numbers from 2026 tariff analyses, not a quote.
Indicative 2026 per-kilogram rates by material (rounded, secondary sources AuditREP/Compliancr, checked 2026-07): glass around 0.04 euros/kg, corrugated cardboard around 0.18, flat cardboard around 0.22, steel around 0.20, aluminium around 0.43 (up roughly 15 percent versus 2025), clear PET and HDPE around 0.40, polypropylene around 0.68, polystyrene around 0.90, and other or multi-layer plastics beyond 1 euro/kg. Eco-modulation moves these numbers a lot: recycled-content, mono-material and correctly-labelled packaging can stack bonuses in the 10 to 20 percent range, while non-recyclable multi-layer formats or packaging with recycling disruptors can take maluses of 50 to 100 percent — the spread between an optimised and a non-optimised pack can exceed three to one.
For small sellers the scheme is deliberately cheap: if you place fewer than 10,000 CSUs per year on the French market you can use the flat-rate declaration and pay a forfait of 80 euros ex-VAT — and 80 euros ex-VAT is also the minimum invoice if your calculated contribution comes in lower. A typical small cross-border seller shipping 2 to 5 tonnes of mixed packaging lands around 300 to 1,100 euros per year (Lovat's estimate, checked 2026-07). The declaration window for the previous year's volumes runs early in the year — the 2026 campaign for 2025 volumes closed at the end of February 2026 — so budget the admin time annually, not just once. For a per-country comparison across the EU, use the packaging EPR fees tool linked below.
Triman and Info-tri: the labelling half of French compliance
Registration alone is not enough — France also mandates on-pack sorting signage. The Triman logo (originally decree 2014-1577, extended by article 17 of the AGEC law, codified at article L.541-9-3 of the environment code) has been mandatory on household packaging since 1 January 2022, together with the Info-tri, a standardised panel telling French consumers how to sort each packaging component (box, film, cap...). Packaging manufactured from 9 September 2022 had to carry the new signage, and the sell-through window for old non-compliant stock closed on 9 March 2023 — so in 2026 any compliant pack you ship into France carries it.
The format rules that matter: the Triman may never be printed smaller than 6 mm; the Info-tri text and symbols must be entirely in French; and since January 2022 displaying the logo only on your website is no longer sufficient — it must be on the product or packaging itself. Small-pack relief exists by surface area: above 20 cm² both the Triman and the sorting details go on the packaging; between 10 and 20 cm² the Triman goes on-pack and the sorting details may move to a leaflet or other medium; below 10 cm² the sorting information may be provided through other channels entirely. One notable exemption: glass beverage bottles do not require the Triman (it is optional there). Citeo members get the Info-tri artwork generated free through Citeo's tooling.
Non-compliance is fined per violation — up to 3,000 euros for a natural person and 15,000 euros for a company — and mislabelled packaging also loses eco-modulation bonuses, so the label has a direct fee impact too. Looking ahead: the EU packaging regulation (PPWR) applies from 12 August 2026 and brings EU-harmonised sorting labels around 2028, which is expected to eventually absorb national marks like the Triman — but that is a future transition, not a reason to skip Triman compliance today.
Amazon and marketplace enforcement: provide your UIN or pay Amazon's numbers
Since 1 January 2022, article L.541-10-9 of the French environment code makes platforms that facilitate distance sales responsible for the EPR obligations of their third-party sellers — unless the seller can prove its own compliance. Amazon's official policy for amazon.fr implements this directly: if you sell EPR-applicable products to customers with a French shipping address, you must provide Amazon with a valid Unique Identification Number for each applicable EPR category. If you are not the producer, you may pass through your upstream supplier's UIN instead; if you can't obtain it, you must register yourself and provide your own.
The enforcement mechanism is financial rather than an outright listing ban. Per Amazon's policy, sellers who don't provide a valid UIN have eco-contributions paid on their behalf: Amazon prepares declaration reports from your listing data — using default values where information is missing — files them with producer responsibility organisations of Amazon's choosing, pays the eco-contributions at those organisations' price lists, and debits your merchant account, credit card or bank account for the full amount. Amazon only stops from the reporting cycle in which you supply a valid UIN; your alternative, in the policy's own words, is to stop selling EPR-applicable products to French addresses.
The practical read for sellers: Amazon's pay-on-behalf numbers are built on defaults that are unlikely to flatter you, and you don't get to choose the cheapest declaration route the way you do with your own Citeo forfait or simplified declaration. Registering yourself is almost always cheaper and puts the public SYDEREP record in your name — which also covers you on every other channel, since the same law applies to eBay, Cdiscount, Etsy and any other marketplace delivering into France.
What changes in 2026: professional packaging EPR and the PPWR
2026 closes the last big gap in French packaging EPR: professional (B2B) packaging. The new stream formally started on 1 January 2026, with the operational obligations kicking in on 1 July 2026 — from that point all packaging placed on the French market is covered by an EPR stream, household or professional. If you sell to French businesses (or ship B2B transport packaging), check whether the professional stream now catches volumes you previously ignored; Citeo runs a dedicated Citeo Pro offer for it.
The EU PPWR, applying from 12 August 2026, also reshapes who counts as the producer: companies that commission manufacturing (order-givers, including private-label retailers) become systematically liable for the eco-contributions on those products, ending the French habit of the manufacturer declaring distributor-brand packaging. If you private-label products made by someone else, re-check which side of the contract declares in France from 2026 onward — and if you build packaging for reuse or recyclability targets, the PPWR tools linked below let you sanity-check your obligations before the fee modulations bite.
Sources (checked 2026-07)
Citeo, citeo.com — why-join page (obligated parties incl. importers, retailers and marketplaces; no-volume-threshold statement; UIN in terms and conditions; forfait/simplified/detailed declaration routes; UIN issued via ADEME), rates page (contribution based on consumer sales units; official 2026 tariff download) and le-mag 2026-changes article (professional packaging EPR: formal start 1 January 2026, obligations from 1 July 2026; PPWR producer-definition changes for order-givers and private label).
ADEME — filieres-rep.ademe.fr/identifiant-unique (IDU: 13-character alphanumeric code starting FR, one per EPR stream, issued in one to three weeks via the eco-organism) and syderep.ademe.fr public producer search (anyone can verify a UIN). Amazon, EPR Requirements Policy for Third-Party Sellers in France (official policy PDF, m.media-amazon.com) — UIN collection since January 2022 under Law No. 2020-105, upstream-supplier UIN option, pay-on-behalf mechanics with default values, account debits, and stop-selling alternative.
Triman and cost details: ecosistant.eu Triman guide (6 mm minimum, on-pack requirement since January 2022, 9 March 2023 sell-through deadline, glass-beverage exemption, fines up to 3,000/15,000 euros), Lovat vatcompliance.co (2025 Triman rules update: 10/20 cm² surface tiers; EPR guide for Amazon sellers: registration 0-150 euros, typical 300-1,100 euros/year for 2-5 tonnes, register before first sale), AuditREP and Compliancr 2026 tariff analyses (indicative per-kg rates by material, aluminium up ~15 percent, eco-modulation ranges, end-of-February declaration window) and Citeo declaration guides (80 euros ex-VAT forfait under 10,000 CSUs, 80 euros minimum billing).
Check your specific case
FAQ
Do I need to register with Citeo if I only sell to France through Amazon?
Yes. Amazon collecting eco-contributions on your behalf is a fallback, not compliance: it files with default values, at price lists you don't choose, and debits your account for the full amount. French law makes you — the seller shipping packaged goods to French consumers — the producer, and there is no volume threshold. Registering yourself (or via your upstream supplier's UIN where you genuinely aren't the producer) is almost always cheaper and covers every sales channel at once.
How much does Citeo cost for a small ecommerce seller?
If you place fewer than 10,000 consumer sales units per year on the French market, you can use the flat-rate declaration: 80 euros ex-VAT, which is also the minimum invoice. Above that, the contribution combines a per-unit component with per-kg material rates (indicatively ~0.04 euros/kg for glass up to more than 1 euro/kg for multi-layer plastics in the 2026 barème); a seller shipping 2-5 tonnes of mixed packaging typically lands around 300-1,100 euros per year. Checked 2026-07 — the official rate grid is downloadable from citeo.com.
What is the UIN (identifiant unique) and where do I have to display it?
The UIN — also called IDU — is a 13-character alphanumeric code starting with FR that ADEME issues once your eco-organism registers you in the national SYDEREP register. You get one per EPR stream (packaging is one stream; electronics, textiles or furniture each need their own). It must appear in your terms and conditions and contractual documents, and you must provide it to marketplaces like Amazon; anyone can verify it in the public producer search on syderep.ademe.fr.
How long does CITEO registration take?
The Citeo sign-up itself is an online process at clients.citeo.com that you can complete in a day. The lead time is the identifier: Citeo submits your registration to ADEME's SYDEREP register, and the UIN comes back within a few days to three weeks. Since Amazon needs that UIN to mark you compliant (and pays contributions on your behalf until it has it), start the registration before you open the French market, not after the debits begin.
Is the Triman label mandatory for products sold online into France?
Yes. Since 1 January 2022 the Triman plus the French-language Info-tri sorting panel must be on the household packaging itself — website-only display stopped being acceptable then, and the sell-through window for old stock ended on 9 March 2023. The mark must be at least 6 mm; packs between 10 and 20 cm² may move the sorting details to a leaflet, below 10 cm² the sorting info may be provided through other media, and glass beverage bottles are exempt. Fines run up to 3,000/15,000 euros per violation.
Do I have to use Citeo, or are there alternatives like Léko?
You must join an approved eco-organism for household packaging, but it doesn't have to be Citeo: Léko is an approved alternative, and Adelphe (a Citeo subsidiary) serves the wine, spirits and pharma sectors. Citeo handles the large majority of the market and its tooling (contribution simulator, free Info-tri generator, flat-rate small-producer declaration) is the default choice for cross-border sellers, but the legal obligation is scheme membership plus the ADEME UIN — whichever approved organisation you contract with.