Dropshipping into France from abroad: the complaints the authority actually brings
Dropshipping into France from abroad: the complaints the French consumer authority brings, EU responsible person, VAT, customs, site blocking.
The short answer
- Lawfulness of the model: dropshipping into France is not prohibited in itself; what is regulated is seller identification, delivery promises, price display, availability claims, withdrawal, the legal guarantee of conformity and product safety.
- Who is liable: article L. 221-15 of the French Consumer Code makes the trader liable as of right towards the consumer for the proper performance of a distance contract, including where it is performed by other service providers such as a foreign supplier or carrier.
- Territorial reach: article L. 132-1 of the Consumer Code provides that the offence of misleading commercial practice is made out as soon as the practice is implemented in France or produces its effects in France, so hosting or invoicing from elsewhere does not displace it.
- Delivery times: absent any indication or agreement, article L. 216-1 requires delivery without undue delay and at the latest thirty days after conclusion of the contract; a breach is punishable under article L. 241-8 by a fine of 3 000 EUR for an individual and 15 000 EUR for a company.
- Responsible person in the Union: under Article 16(1) of Regulation (EU) 2023/988, applicable since 13 December 2024, a product may be placed on the market only if an economic operator established in the Union assumes the tasks listed in Article 4(3) of Regulation (EU) 2019/1020.
- Measures against the website: article L. 521-3-1 of the Consumer Code allows the authority, on cumulative conditions, to order a warning message, de-indexing, measures limiting access or the blocking of a domain name for a maximum of three months renewable once, with an implementation period never shorter than forty-eight hours. Article L. 531-1 punishes obstruction of investigators' functions with two years' imprisonment and a fine of 300 000 EUR.
Operating a dropshipping business from outside France does not remove your French obligations and does not put you out of reach of French investigators. In French law you are the seller, not an intermediary: the buyer's contract is with you, and your supplier's or carrier's failures are your failures. The complaints raised in this configuration are consistent, and almost all are documented from the outside.
Enforcement belongs to the Directorate General for Competition Policy, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control, known by its French initials DGCCRF, whose field inspections are carried out by departmental directorates for the protection of populations (DDPP) and regional directorates (DREETS). It does not need a court to act: it can require documents, issue injunctions with daily penalties, impose fines itself, publish its decisions and, in defined cases, obtain measures against the website. Misleading commercial practices remain, in parallel, a criminal offence.
What follows maps the complaints, the obligations behind them and the possible outcomes, for operators with no French establishment. It is neither an assessment of your file nor a compliance programme. For an examination of your position, our team handling DGCCRF, DDPP and DREETS matters can assist you.
Why operating from outside France changes nothing
You are the seller of record, whoever ships the parcel
The economic logic of dropshipping is that you never hold the goods: the order goes to a supplier, generally outside the European Union, who ships directly to the buyer. French law does not follow that logic. Article L. 221-15 of the Consumer Code makes the trader liable as of right, towards the consumer, for the proper performance of a distance contract, whether performed by himself or by other service providers, with exoneration limited to the consumer's own act, an unforeseeable and insurmountable act of an unconnected third party, or force majeure. A supplier who ships late or ships nothing is therefore your breach.
The offence follows the effects, not the seat
Article L. 132-1 of the Consumer Code provides that the offence of misleading commercial practice is made out as soon as the practice is implemented in France or produces its effects in France, so hosting the site elsewhere or invoicing from elsewhere does not displace it. The substantive definitions are in articles L. 121-1 to L. 121-3: practices contrary to professional diligence which materially distort consumer behaviour, misleading practices by act, and misleading practices by omission of material information. Whether your offer is aimed at France is settled by the directed-activity test discussed in our article on selling to French consumers from outside France.
The complaints that recur in this configuration
Announced delivery times
This is the first complaint in almost every file. Article L. 216-1 requires delivery, absent any indication or agreement, without undue delay and at the latest thirty days after conclusion of the contract. A shop advertising delivery in three to five days while the goods travel a route taking three to six weeks generates two grievances: a delivery breach, punishable under article L. 241-8 by a fine of 3 000 EUR for an individual and 15 000 EUR for a company, and a misleading practice under article L. 121-2. Article L. 216-6 then opens termination, with reimbursement within fourteen days under article L. 216-7.
The identity and the address of the seller
The second recurring complaint is that nobody can tell who sells. Article 19 of Law No 2004-575 of 21 June 2004 on confidence in the digital economy requires easy, direct and permanent access to the trader's name or corporate name, address of establishment, an email address and telephone details allowing effective contact, the commercial register number, the share capital and the VAT identification number, publisher identification now sitting in article 1-1 of the same law. Article L. 121-2 treats a practice as misleading where the person on whose behalf it is carried out cannot be identified.
Real prices and the charges that appear later
A price displayed without the charges the buyer will actually pay is the third standard complaint. Article 19 of the LCEN requires prices to be indicated clearly and unambiguously, in particular as to whether taxes and delivery costs are included, while article L. 121-2 covers false allegations on price and article L. 121-3 covers omitted material information. In a cross-border configuration the sensitive charges are import VAT, customs duty and carrier handling fees claimed on the doorstep: the problem is not that they exist, but that a price presented as final is then supplemented.
Availability claims, ranking and reviews
Statements about stock and demand are checked because they are easy to check. Counters showing units left, banners announcing that an offer closes tonight and reappearing the next day, and products listed as in stock when the supplier's own listing is exhausted are read as false allegations on the availability of the goods under article L. 121-2, which also makes material the ranking parameters of offers and the reliability of consumer reviews under article L. 121-3.
After-sales service, withdrawal and the legal guarantee
A contact form that produces no reply, an address that turns out to be a mailbox: article L. 121-2 covers false or misleading allegations on the extent of the trader's commitments and on the handling of complaints and consumer rights. After the sale, the consumer has fourteen days to withdraw under article L. 221-18, refunds including delivery costs are due within fourteen days under article L. 221-24, late refunds attract the escalating surcharge of article L. 242-4, and a missing withdrawal notice extends the period by twelve months under article L. 221-20. On conformity, the seller answers for defects appearing within two years under article L. 217-3, and article L. 241-5 punishes bad-faith obstruction of the guarantee with a civil fine of up to 300 000 EUR, raisable to 10 per cent of average annual turnover.
How these complaints become a file
None of this requires an inspection at your offices. A file is built from consumer reports, archived pages, a test purchase, your own correspondence with the buyer and the data held by the platform or payment provider. Which of those elements is genuinely damaging, and which is neutral, depends on the wording of your pages and the traceability of your operations, and that is the assessment a lawyer carries out before anything is answered.
Table 1 - Map of the recurring complaints in a cross-border dropshipping configuration
The responsible person established in the Union
The rule most often discovered too late
This obligation surprises operators most, because it has no equivalent in consumer information law and cannot be satisfied by a clause. Article 16(1) of Regulation (EU) 2023/988 on general product safety, applicable since 13 December 2024, provides that a product may be placed on the market only if there is an economic operator established in the Union responsible for the tasks set out in Article 4(3) of Regulation (EU) 2019/1020, with written evidence available to the authorities on request. Article 16(3) requires that operator's name and contact details to appear on the product, its packaging, the parcel or an accompanying document.
Who can play that role
Article 4(2) of Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 on market surveillance lists who may act: a manufacturer established in the Union; an importer where the manufacturer is not; an authorised representative holding a written mandate; or, failing those, a fulfilment service provider established in the Union. Paragraph 3 sets the tasks: keeping the EU declaration of conformity and technical documentation available, answering reasoned requests, alerting the authorities to a risk, and cooperating on corrective measures. Its paragraph 5 lists harmonised categories such as toys, machinery and radio equipment, while the general product safety Regulation extends the requirement to non-food consumer products more broadly.
What the listing must show, and the marketplace's own duties
Article 19 of Regulation (EU) 2023/988 requires the online offer to indicate clearly and visibly the manufacturer's name and postal and electronic address, the responsible person's details where the manufacturer is not established in the Union, information identifying the product including an image, and warnings in a language easily understood by consumers. Product pages copied from a supplier's catalogue contain none of that. Article 20 requires accidents to be notified through the Safety Business Gateway, and Article 22 obliges online marketplaces to act on orders to remove content referring to a dangerous product within two working days, so your listing can be taken down without any decision addressed to you.
Sanctions on the product safety side
The French sanctions framework was adapted by the transposition law of 22 April 2024. According to information published by the authority itself, failure to comply with recall obligations carries five years' imprisonment and a fine of 600 000 EUR, raisable to 10 per cent of average annual turnover. We state this as the authority presents it, the statutory text not having been read for this article, and whether those provisions reach a given operator is a point to verify with counsel.
Table 2 - The responsible person established in the Union
Customs and VAT on imported parcels: where a complaint becomes a figure
Import VAT is due from the first euro
The exemption for consignments below 22 EUR disappeared on 1 July 2021: the French customs administration states that goods bought online from outside the Union bear VAT from the first euro, save in the overseas departments, with an electronic customs declaration for all such consignments. The Import One Stop Shop, under articles 369 terdecies and following of Directive 2006/112/EC, covers goods other than excise goods in consignments not exceeding 150 EUR; a taxable person not established in the Union uses it through an intermediary established in the Union, or under a mutual assistance agreement of similar scope, which must be verified rather than presumed.
The end of the 150 EUR customs relief
The relief for consignments of negligible value rested on article 23 of Regulation (EC) No 1186/2009. Council Regulation (EU) 2026/382 of 11 February 2026 removes it, and pending deployment of the EU Customs Data Hub an interim flat duty of 3 EUR per item applies to consignments below 150 EUR shipped directly to consumers in the Union, from 1 July 2026 to 1 July 2028, extendable, charged per distinct tariff subheading rather than per parcel, the declarant being liable. Product identifiers become mandatory from 1 November 2026. The Union handling fee remains a proposal, and platforms as official importers is not in force.
Why this is a consumer law issue as much as a tax one
These charges are lawful. What generates a complaint is presenting a total price to a French buyer and then having a carrier claim VAT, duty and handling fees at the door, or refusing a refund because customs charges are not recoverable. That is a price information and misleading practice issue on top of the tax question, and reconciling your pricing display with your customs position is an exercise to run with counsel before the first complaint.
What we see in practice
In the files we handle, the first item in an investigator's bundle is rarely a legal argument: it is a set of dated screen captures of the product pages, taken weeks or months before any contact, sitting next to a list of consumer reports about the same site. That order matters. By the time a foreign operator learns that a file exists, the version of the site that will be assessed has already been fixed, and cleaning up the pages afterwards changes nothing about what is in the bundle, even if it remains worth doing. We regularly see operators discover that a countdown banner they treated as decoration, or a delivery window inherited from a supplier's template, was captured on several different dates and has become the clearest exhibit against them. The reports themselves are usually short and repetitive: a refund not made, an address that never answers, a parcel delivered with charges to pay. Their value to the authority lies in the pattern, not in any single one.
How the authority identifies and reaches an operator with no French establishment
Consumer reports, and a service dedicated to online commerce
France operates a public reporting platform for consumers, SignalConso, alongside RappelConso for product recalls, and a cluster of reports about the same site or the same refund refusal is enough to open a file. According to the authority's published information, a centre for the surveillance of electronic commerce created in 2000 in Morlaix was integrated in 2009 into the national investigation service, and handles complaints whose authors are not clearly identified. A distance selling investigation published in March 2018, dated but instructive, reported 1 028 websites checked, 283 warnings, 275 administrative injunctions and 52 official reports.
Investigation powers that follow the money and the data
Article L. 512-8 of the Consumer Code allows authorised agents to require the communication of documents of any kind useful to their mission, and to obtain, copy or seize them by any means in whoever's hands they are found. At European level, Article 9(3) of Regulation (EU) 2017/2394 allows access to any document, data or information, the tracing of financial and data flows, obtaining banking information and the identity of website owners, and test purchases made if necessary under a false identity, Article 29 providing for coordinated sweeps.
The data held by marketplaces
Platform obligations have transformed the identification question. Article 30 of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065, the Digital Services Act, requires providers to obtain, before a trader uses the service, his name, address, telephone and email, a copy of an identification document, payment account details, the trade register and registration number, and a self-certification of compliance, with reasonable verification, retention for six months after the relationship ends, and suspension where information is not corrected. Article 32 requires consumers who bought an illegal product in the preceding six months to be told of the illegality, the trader's identity and available remedies.
Silence is not a neutral option
Article L. 531-1 of the Consumer Code punishes obstruction of investigators' functions with two years' imprisonment and a fine of 300 000 EUR, raisable, proportionately to the advantages derived, to 10 per cent of average annual turnover. Ignoring a document request from abroad therefore carries its own exposure, and how such a request is answered is among the first questions to settle with counsel, as we discuss in our article on the foreign supplier whose French customer is summoned by the consumer authority.
What we see in practice
The first days after a request for documents are where most of the damage is done, and it is almost always self-inflicted. We regularly see three reflexes from operators established outside France: replying directly by email in the belief that a quick and friendly answer will close the matter, sending far more material than was asked for, or treating a request addressed abroad as something that can be ignored. Each creates a new exhibit. The written deadline is usually short, and shorter in practice than it looks, because the items requested (order histories, supplier contracts, carrier records, payment data) sit with third parties who need their own time. Extensions are sometimes obtainable, but only if asked for before the date, in writing and with reasons. In our experience the difference between a prepared file and an improvised one is not the law invoked: it is whether the operator knew, on day one, what it actually held, who held it and in what form it could be produced.
The possible outcomes, up to blocking access to the site
Injunctions, fines and publication
Article L. 521-1 allows the authority, after an adversarial procedure, to order the trader to comply, to cease unlawful conduct or to delete an unlawful term, with a daily penalty capped at 3 000 EUR and a total liquidation capped at 300 000 EUR; where the breach is punishable by a fine of at least 75 000 EUR, that penalty may be set by reference to worldwide turnover excluding tax, not exceeding 0.1 per cent, with the liquidated total capped at 5 per cent. Fines are imposed by the authority itself under article L. 522-1 following the procedure of article L. 522-5, and may be published at your expense under article L. 522-6. Whether such a fine can be collected is addressed in our article on the enforcement of a French administrative fine outside the European Union.
Measures against the interface, including domain name blocking
Article L. 521-3-1 matters most for an operator with nothing in France. It applies on cumulative conditions: a breach of the listed consumer provisions, or of the rules on product conformity and safety, committed from an online interface, and either the author cannot be identified, or he has not complied with an injunction. Acting by way of requisition, the authority may order a warning message to consumers and, only where the offence carries at least two years' imprisonment and is liable to harm seriously the fairness of transactions or consumers' interests, order de-indexing, measures limiting access, or the blocking of a domain name for a maximum of three months renewable once, followed, if the infringement persists, by deletion or transfer of the domain name. The implementation period may not be less than forty-eight hours.
Criminal outcomes
Alongside the administrative track, article L. 132-2 punishes misleading commercial practice with two years' imprisonment and a fine of 300 000 EUR, raisable, proportionately to the advantages derived, to 10 per cent of average annual turnover or to 50 per cent of the expenditure on the advertising or practice, rising to 80 per cent for environmental claims; committed through an online public communication service the penalties become five years' imprisonment and 750 000 EUR. Article L. 132-2-1 raises the custodial penalty to three years where contracts followed, and legal persons incur five times the amount provided for individuals. Where a non-EU director sits behind a French entity, further dynamics arise, examined in our article on the Dubai-based director of a French company facing a consumer audit.
Table 3 - The authority's levers against an operator with no French establishment
The windows that decide the outcome
Each track has a moment where the file is still open: the adversarial phase before an injunction, the observations phase before a fine, the reply to a document request. Those windows are short, they do not reopen, and what is written in them is read later by everyone. Preparing them is work for counsel on your actual file.
Questions frequently asked
Is dropshipping into France lawful?
Yes. There is no French prohibition on selling goods you do not hold in stock. What is regulated is everything around it: who you say you are, what you promise about delivery and availability, the price you display, how you handle withdrawal, refunds and the legal guarantee, and whether your products have a responsible person established in the Union. The complaints above concern those points, not the model.
Our supplier ships from outside the European Union. Who is the seller in the eyes of French law?
You are. The consumer contracted with you, and article L. 221-15 of the Consumer Code makes you liable as of right for the proper performance of the contract even where the obligations are performed by other service providers, subject only to the consumer's own act, an unforeseeable and insurmountable act of an unconnected third party, or force majeure. Your recourse against the supplier is a separate dispute, generally under another law and another forum.
Do we need a responsible person established in the Union?
Where your offer targets consumers in the Union, Article 16(1) of Regulation (EU) 2023/988 requires an economic operator established in the Union to assume the tasks listed in Article 4(3) of Regulation (EU) 2019/1020, and Article 19 requires that person's name and postal and electronic address to appear in the online offer where the manufacturer is not established in the Union. Which permitted option fits your range and logistics is a structuring question for counsel.
What delivery time can we announce?
Whatever you can meet. If you indicate no date, article L. 216-1 imposes delivery without undue delay and at the latest thirty days after conclusion of the contract. If you indicate a date you are bound by it: failure exposes you to termination and reimbursement under articles L. 216-6 and L. 216-7, to an administrative fine under article L. 241-8, and to a misleading practice qualification under article L. 121-2.
Can the French authority really block our website?
In defined cases, yes. Article L. 521-3-1 allows the authority, by way of requisition, to order a warning message, de-indexing, measures limiting access, or the blocking of a domain name, on cumulative conditions that include either the impossibility of identifying the operator or non-compliance with a previous injunction. Domain name blocking is reserved for offences carrying at least two years' imprisonment, lasts three months renewable once, and may be followed by deletion or transfer of the domain name.
How would the authority find us if we have no French company?
Through consumer reports on the national reporting platform, the monitoring of electronic commerce by the authority's national investigation service, test purchases and the tracing of financial and data flows under Article 9(3) of Regulation (EU) 2017/2394, and the trader identification data marketplaces must collect and retain under Article 30 of the Digital Services Act. Being unidentifiable is itself a condition opening the way to measures against the website.
Is the customs relief for parcels under 150 EUR still available?
No. Council Regulation (EU) 2026/382 of 11 February 2026 removed the threshold-based relief, and an interim flat duty of 3 EUR per item applies to consignments below 150 EUR shipped directly to consumers in the Union from 1 July 2026 to 1 July 2028, with possible extension, charged per distinct tariff subheading rather than per parcel. Import VAT has been due from the first euro since 1 July 2021, with an electronic customs declaration required.
Conclusion
The complaints brought against cross-border dropshipping operations are few and stable: delivery times that were never achievable, a seller who cannot be identified or reached, prices that grow after payment, availability claims contradicted by the supplier's own stock, after-sales that does not answer, withdrawal and guarantee obligations treated as optional, and products offered with no responsible person established in the Union. Each is documented from outside the business, which is why the absence of a French establishment offers no protection.
The outcomes are equally clear: injunctions with penalties calibrated on turnover, fines imposed without a court and published at your expense, criminal exposure that follows the effects of the practice rather than your place of incorporation, and, in defined cases, measures reaching the domain name itself. Having your pages, your supply chain and your customs and VAT position reviewed by a lawyer at the Paris Bar before an investigator opens a file is a different exercise from answering once the file is open.
About the author
Guillaume Leclerc is an avocat admitted to the Paris Bar, practising through SELARL Victoris, 34 Avenue des Champs-Élysées, Paris. His practice is centred on French consumer-protection and competition enforcement: DGCCRF, DDPP and DREETS inspections, requests for documents, adversarial proceedings before an injunction or a fine, administrative fines and the appeals brought against them. He is regularly instructed by traders, platforms and suppliers established outside France, works in French and English, and handles files remotely for clients with no French establishment. Further detail is set out on the firm's page on French consumer authority proceedings, and enquiries about a specific file can be sent through the contact page.
Last reviewed: September 2026.
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