DGCCRF lawyer Paris: retailers facing inquiry, injunction and fine.

Yes. An ordinary inspection requires neither an appointment nor prior authorisation from a judge. The Consumer Code (Article L. 512-5) allows officers to enter business premises from 8:00 to 20:00, and outside those hours when the shop is open to the public or a sales, manufacturing or packaging activity is under way. A shop open on a Sunday or in the evening can therefore be inspected during its opening hours.

Officers may request any document useful to their task and copy it on any medium (Article L. 512-8). The retailer cannot refuse access, since obstructing the officers' duties is prohibited by Article L. 512-4 and punished under Article L. 531-1. The retailer does, however, keep the right to ask the officers to state their capacity, to note the times of arrival and departure, to draw up a list of what was handed over and to photograph the inspected shelves themselves.

These notes are then used to check that the record of the visit describes the situation faithfully. The firm examines these elements as soon as the record is received, before the labels or the shopfront are altered.

A shop inspection rests on the officers' ordinary powers: access to business premises, recording of observations, requests for documents. A search and seizure is a heavier measure, authorised by an order made by the liberty and custody judge, who checks that the administration's application is well founded (Articles L. 512-51 and L. 512-52 of the Consumer Code). It may target any premises and allows documents and files to be taken away with the assistance of judicial police officers.

The order is notified on site to the occupier, who receives a full copy and must be informed of the right to call a lawyer of their choice (Article L. 512-58). The judge assesses the application on the material that the administration chooses to put before them: the criminal chamber approved a First President who had held that "the Administration is entitled to choose the material it considers should be presented in support of its application for authorisation" (our translation), provided that the documents produced have an apparently lawful origin, the judge being able to request further documents if they do not consider themselves sufficiently informed (Cass. crim., 21 March 2018, No. 16-87.189), a decision made under Article L. 450-4 of the Commercial Code and unfavourable to the companies searched.

The distinction matters for the challenge: an ordinary inspection is disputed together with the penalty that follows from it, whereas a search and seizure is challenged within its own ten-day time limit.

Two remedies coexist before the First President of the court of appeal: the appeal against the order authorising the visit, lodged within ten days of its notification (Article L. 512-63), and the challenge to the conduct of the operations. This second remedy is provided for by Article L. 512-64 of the Consumer Code; it is brought by a declaration to the registry of the judicial court within ten days of the handing over or receipt of the record and the inventory, and it does not have suspensive effect. The criminal chamber holds that "Article L. 512-64 of the Consumer Code establishes a challenge to the conduct of all the search and seizure operations" (our translation) (Cass. crim., 10 January 2023, No. 21-85.526).

In the same case, however, the Court dismissed the appeals of the companies searched: the criticisms of the notification records did not lead to the decisions being quashed, and the First President had found, in the exercise of their discretion, that the seizures, targeted on fifteen employees, were neither massive nor indiscriminate. The challenge therefore requires precise criticisms: an incomplete copy of the order, no lawyer called, documents unrelated to the investigation, an imprecise inventory.

The firm goes through the record hour by hour, compares the inventory with the items actually taken and checks that the documents seized fall within the scope set by the judge.

Yes, where the occupier was not given the means to call one before the operations began. In a case concerning a Paris shop suspected of presenting imported tableware as made in France, the delegate of the First President of the Paris Court of Appeal held that "the occupier of the premises or their representative must be given the means, before the operations begin, to call on a lawyer and that, if this is not the case, the absence of assistance by a lawyer is liable to infringe the rights of the defence of the person targeted by these operations" (our translation) (CA Paris, 2 October 2024, No. 23/06363).

The copy handed to the company's representative did not include the page stating this right, and the lawyer arrived only at 20:15, for operations that had begun at 10:05. The record was annulled, the documents had been returned and the administration stated that they would not be used for any prosecution. The order made by the liberty and custody judge authorising the visit was, however, upheld, so the decision does not call into question the principle of the inspection.

The lawyer's presence is not a condition of lawfulness; what matters is the prior information. The copy of the order must therefore be kept exactly as it was handed over.

Where officers record an offence on the basis of tests or analyses, they send the State laboratory's report to the alleged offender, who has three clear days from its receipt to request an adversarial expert assessment (Consumer Code, Article L. 512-40). The public prosecutor is then informed when the record is transmitted. This very short time limit means the report must be read as soon as it arrives.

The safeguard has a limited scope, however. The criminal chamber holds that "the adversarial expert assessment provided for in Articles L. 512-40 et seq. of the Consumer Code is required only where the authorised DGCCRF officers have recorded an offence in an official record on the basis of tests or analyses carried out by a State laboratory or an approved laboratory" (our translation) (Cass. crim., 8 April 2026, No. 25-86.736). The appeal was dismissed: the tests at issue, carried out outside that framework, did not give entitlement to the second expert chosen by the person prosecuted.

The firm therefore first checks who carried out the analysis, then compliance with the time limit, the identity of the samples and the method followed, before requesting the assessment or discussing the results before the judge.

Article L. 112-1 of the Consumer Code requires the seller to inform the consumer of prices by marking, labelling, display or any appropriate means. Each breach is punishable by an administrative fine capped at €3,000 if the retailer trades in their own name and €15,000 if they trade as a company (Article L. 131-5), and fines imposed for concurrent breaches are cumulative (Article L. 522-7).

A challenge must rest on material evidence. The Paris administrative court of appeal upheld a fine of €7,200 imposed by the Paris departmental directorate for the protection of populations on a clothes shop in the 6th arrondissement, for seventy-two breaches. The retailer argued that the shopfront was being installed and that a single price applied to several colours; the court noted, on the basis of the record and the photographs annexed to it, that no display made it possible to establish without uncertainty that the same items in different colours were sold at the same price (CAA Paris, 5 April 2024, No. 23PA03656). The application was dismissed.

A useful challenge rests on photographs from the day of the inspection, on the count of the items relied on and on an examination of the adversarial procedure followed.

Products advertised as sale items must have been offered for sale and paid for at least one month before the start date of the sales period (Article L. 310-3 of the Commercial Code). Restocking during the sales is therefore a frequent point of inspection, particularly in commission-affiliate networks where the supplier supplies the shop.

The criminal chamber upheld the conviction of a commission-agent company: the court of appeal had established that "the defendant did not merely sell off the stock it held, but restocked during the sales period from a supplier that was a separate legal entity" (our translation) (Cass. crim., 22 February 2022, No. 21-83.226). The judges had also noted that the sale items had not been offered for sale for at least one month. The appeal was dismissed, which makes this decision unfavourable to the retailer.

The defence is prepared with the delivery history, the dates the goods were put on the shelves and the contract between the shop and its supplier, since the shop's own holding of the items, their age on the shelves and the date of their payment decide the case.

An announcement of a price reduction may be characterised as a misleading commercial practice where it rests on false allegations or allegations liable to mislead as to the price or how it is calculated (Consumer Code, Article L. 121-2). This offence carries two years' imprisonment and a fine of €300,000, a sum that may reach 10% of average annual turnover or 50% of the expenditure incurred for the practice, and the penalties rise to five years and €750,000 where the practice is carried out through an online service or a digital medium (Article L. 132-2).

The case then changes judge. The public prosecutor decides what follows, the criminal court tries the case if it is seised, and the investigation may continue with judicial police officers who, where appropriate, requisition the assistance of consumer protection officers during a search (Cass. crim., 14 January 2025, No. 24-83.571). The Code of Criminal Procedure then sets the safeguards applicable to interviews and searches.

The central question remains the reference price: the announcement must state the lowest price charged to all consumers during the thirty days preceding the reduction, except for successive reductions and perishable goods (Article L. 112-1-1). The firm gathers the till receipts, the sales records and the advertising materials before any interview, then prepares the defence before the criminal court.

Not always. Nullity most often presupposes that the irregularity caused prejudice to the person prosecuted. In a case where officers of the departmental directorate for the protection of populations had been requisitioned by a judicial police officer to assist them during a search, the criminal chamber recognised that the court of appeal had been wrong to set aside the provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure applicable to those requisitioned persons.

It nonetheless dismissed the appeal, noting that the defendant "does not establish or even allege the existence of prejudice resulting from the irregularity relied on" (our translation) (Cass. crim., 14 January 2025, No. 24-83.571), and that the officers requisitioned had neither signed the record nor provided technical assistance. This decision is unfavourable to the person prosecuted: it shows that an isolated defect of form is not enough.

The firm therefore looks for the irregularity that actually weighed on the case: a document seized outside the authorised scope, a statement taken without prior information, an analysis without an adversarial expert assessment. It then measures what remains of the prosecution without that act, before choosing between an application for nullity and a defence on the merits.

The proportionality of the amount is argued first before the administration, then before the administrative court. In relation to annual agreements concluded out of time, the Council of State recalls that the administration assesses, in light of all the circumstances, whether a breach calls for a penalty and, if so, sets its amount according to its seriousness. It adds that review of proportionality falls to the lower courts and that the Court of Cassation intervenes only if the penalty is out of proportion to the breaches (CE, 21 October 2026, No. 504150).

In that case, a distributor had been fined 157 times, for a total of €2,931,000, for annual agreements concluded with its suppliers after the legal date. The appeal was dismissed and the penalty upheld. The decision is therefore unfavourable to the company penalised, and it shows that the proportionality argument must be developed from the observations stage and before the administrative court of appeal, with figures.

The useful elements are concrete: the duration and number of breaches, the share of responsibility of the partners, corrections made, and the size and results of the business.

The injunction sets a reasonable period to comply with obligations or to cease a practice, and may be accompanied by a penalty payment of at most €3,000 per day, up to €300,000 in total (Consumer Code, Article L. 521-1). Publication of the measure, at the professional's expense, is also possible (Article L. 521-2). Failing to comply within the period exposes the professional to an administrative fine of at most €75,000 for a legal entity, or to the amount of the fine attached to the initial breach if it is higher (Article L. 532-1).

Challenging the injunction before the administrative court therefore does not remove the need to assess the risk of non-compliance while the proceedings last. The Versailles administrative court of appeal has held that an injunction aimed at ending a breach pursues an objective of consumer protection and constitutes an administrative police measure, so that the limitation period for penalty proceedings cannot be relied on against it (CAA Versailles, 30 June 2026, No. 23VE02130). The company's application was dismissed.

The firm weighs the strength of the complaint against the cost of provisional compliance, then chooses between compliance, observations and a challenge.

Those in force at the time of the facts, unless the new law is more lenient. Article 112-1 of the Criminal Code lays down this principle, and the criminal chamber recalls it: "only the penalties applicable on the date the offences they punish were committed may be imposed" (our translation) (Cass. crim., 30 June 2026, No. 25-85.056). In that case, the court of appeal had imposed a fine of €50,000 for a deception committed before the law of 17 March 2014, which raised the fine incurred to €300,000.

The judgment was set aside as to the penalties, while the finding of guilt was upheld. Deception as to the nature, origin, composition or substantial qualities of goods is now punished by three years' imprisonment and a fine of €300,000 (Articles L. 441-1 and L. 454-1 of the Consumer Code).

For a retailer prosecuted for old facts, the exact date of each sale or each batch becomes a point of defence. The firm reconstructs this chronology from invoices and inventories, and checks the version of the text applied by the judgment.

No, in principle. The documents gathered and drawn up during the investigation and recording of a breach that has given rise to an administrative penalty procedure may be disclosed only to the person concerned or their representative (Consumer Code, Article L. 522-8). This rule protects the commercial information given to the officers, such as margins, suppliers or sales volumes.

Publication of the penalty is subject to another regime. The administration may decide to publish its decision, provided it has informed the company of this during the adversarial procedure, and publication is at the company's expense (Article L. 522-6). For fines relating to payment periods, the Commercial Code provides for publication on the administration's website (Article L. 470-2 of the Commercial Code), for amounts that may reach two million euros for a legal entity (Article L. 441-16).

The firm discusses the publication measure from the observations stage, as to its medium and duration, and sees to it that sensitive documents produced before the judge are limited to what is necessary.