Legal requirements for a business website in France

The legal notice

The legal notice (mentions légales) tells visitors who they are dealing with. It is mandatory on every business website and must be easy to reach, on a dedicated page or within the terms of sale. Service-Public, the French government’s information service, lists:

• The identity of the business. For a sole trader: surname, first name and address, with the words “entrepreneur individuel” or the initials “EI”. For a company: name, legal form, registered office address and share capital.
• The registration number of the business (RCS or SIREN number).
• A contact email and phone number.
• The VAT number, if the business has one.
• The website host: name, address and phone number.
• The supervising authority, for a regulated activity that requires authorisation.

According to Service-Public, a missing legal notice is punishable by one year’s imprisonment and a €75,000 fine for a sole trader, and a €375,000 fine for a company.

Terms of sale

It depends on who your customers are.

• You sell to consumers: terms of sale (CGV) must be on the website. They cover, among other things, the features of the offer, the price including tax, payment and delivery terms, the right of withdrawal and guarantees. Their absence is punishable by a €3,000 fine.
• You sell to businesses: terms of sale are optional, but you must be able to provide them to a customer who asks. Refusing is punishable by a €15,000 fine.

Personal data

A name, an email address, a phone number or an IP address are personal data. As soon as your site collects any, through a contact form for example, you must inform the person at the time of collection: who processes the data, for what purpose, on what legal basis, who receives it, how long it is kept, what their rights are and how to complain to the CNIL, the French data protection authority.

In practice this information sits in a privacy policy, separate from the terms of sale and reachable from every page. Service-Public states that leaving out any one of these items is punishable by a €1,500 fine.

For marketing emails, the person’s explicit agreement is required, unless they are already a customer for a similar product or are a professional. Every message must offer a way to unsubscribe.

Cookies and the consent banner

The rule is prior consent: until the person has agreed, the trackers concerned can be neither set nor read. This applies, for example, to personalised advertising cookies and to those of social media share buttons.

Consent must come from a positive action. A pre-ticked box is worthless, and continuing to browse does not count as agreement. The CNIL also requires that refusing be as easy as accepting.

Some trackers are exempt from consent. The CNIL lists, among others, those that remember the user’s choice about trackers, authentication, the shopping basket, interface personalisation such as language, and some audience measurement tools under conditions.

The practical consequence: a site that sets no tracker requiring consent does not need a banner. That is the choice made on whitenova.fr, explained in our cookie policy.

What depends on your activity

• Subscriptions sold to consumers: since 1 June 2023, the site must offer a free online cancellation feature. Its absence is punishable by a €15,000 fine.
• Regulated activity: the legal notice names the authority that issued the authorisation.

The checklist

1. A complete legal notice page, linked from every page.
2. A privacy policy, if the site collects any data at all.
3. Terms of sale online if you sell to consumers, ready to send if you sell to businesses.
4. An inventory of what the site stores on the visitor’s device, and a banner only if it is needed.
5. A review by a lawyer if your activity is out of the ordinary.

Sources

Pages consulted on 10 October 2026:

• Service-Public (in French): mandatory details on a sole trader’s website
• Service-Public (in French): mandatory details on a company’s website
• CNIL (in French): cookies and trackers, what the law says