On 5 May 2026, the Tribunal judiciaire de Lille became the first court in any EU jurisdiction to rule on a case brought under a national transposition of the European Accessibility Act (EAA). (A transposition is the domestic law each member state writes to give effect to an EU directive.) The defendant won.
Auchan E-Commerce had been sued by the French disability associations apiDV and Droit Pluriel for running an inaccessible online shopping site. The court dismissed the case. The judge applied a €250 million revenue threshold from France's 2005 disability law (Loi 2005-102, Article 47), not the €2 million microenterprise threshold that comes from the EAA itself. Auchan E-Commerce reported €182M revenue in 2023 and €144M in 2024. Both figures sit below the older domestic threshold, so the court found no obligation, even after noting "fairly low" accessibility across most of the site.
The associations filed an appeal to the Cour d'appel de Douai on 7 May 2026. The appeal court will decide which threshold applies. That decision will shape EAA enforcement in France, and reverberate beyond it.
This post explains what happened, why the threshold question matters, and what mid-market operators should make of it.
What the Lille tribunal ruled
In July 2025, three French disability associations sent formal notices, called mise en demeure, to four major retailers. The associations were apiDV, Droit Pluriel, and Intérêt à Agir. The retailers were Auchan, Carrefour, E.Leclerc, and Picard Surgelés. The notices demanded accessibility compliance by 1 September 2025.
The deadline passed. On 12 November 2025, the associations filed emergency injunction proceedings, called assignation en référé, at the Tribunal judiciaire de Paris. A référé is a fast-tracked civil procedure that seeks an order to stop ongoing harm. In this case, the alleged harm was the continued operation of inaccessible commerce sites. Unlike a main suit, which can take years, a référé produces a quicker judicial test of the underlying legal question. The Auchan case was transferred to Lille on jurisdictional grounds and heard on 3 March 2026.
On 5 May 2026, the Lille tribunal handed down its decision. The case was dismissed. The reasoning turned on which French statute applied. Article 47 of Loi 2005-102 sets a €250M revenue threshold for the older domestic accessibility obligation, in force since 2005 and enforced inconsistently. The provisions of the French Consumer Code transposing the EAA, in force since 28 June 2025, carry a €2M threshold under EU rules. The Lille tribunal read the two regimes as overlapping rather than additive and applied the higher €250M domestic threshold. Auchan E-Commerce, the entity sued, sits below that line.
The judge did not endorse the site's accessibility. The ruling noted Auchan's website had "fairly low" accessibility, with "strong or major" failures across 13 of the 19 sections the associations audited. The dismissal was on threshold and jurisdiction, not on the substance of accessibility itself.
The associations' public position, set out in apiDV's statement(opens in new tab) and in Intérêt à Agir's response(opens in new tab), is that the Lille reading is incorrect both under French law and under the EU directive. In a joint statement, Anne-Sarah Kertudo, founder of Droit Pluriel, and Pierre Marragou, president of apiDV, put their objection plainly.
This ruling rests on a manifestly erroneous reading of the legal texts. It plainly contradicts French law and European legislation, and above all allows companies to freely circumvent any accessibility obligation in total disregard of the principle of equality and non-discrimination. Accessibility cannot be an option. It is a fundamental right and a legal obligation.
Translated from the original French published by Intérêt à Agir.
On 7 May 2026, apiDV and Droit Pluriel filed an appeal to the Cour d'appel de Douai(opens in new tab). Intérêt à Agir supported the filing. Disability press analysis(opens in new tab) reads the appeal as the case that will determine whether the EAA bites in France for the mid-market band.
This is the first substantive ruling under any EAA transposition in the EU. It is not final. The appeal is the case that will matter.
Why the threshold matters for EAA enforcement
The legal pivot in Lille is a single question. Which threshold applies to a French online retailer in 2026?
The EU's microenterprise exemption is narrow. It is designed to protect very small businesses, not to carve out a band running up to a quarter of a billion euros in revenue. The Lille tribunal's reading effectively imported the higher domestic threshold into an obligation the directive itself does not gate at that revenue level.
The Cour d'appel de Douai now decides whether the directive's threshold or France's domestic threshold governs the obligation. The legal question is whether France has transposed the EAA fully. If Douai upholds Lille, France has effectively failed to transpose Directive 2019/882 for online retailers in the €2M to €250M band. That gap could itself trigger EU infringement proceedings. Under EU primacy principles, the more likely outcome is that Douai overturns Lille. If it does, the €2M threshold applies. Auchan and other mid-market retailers fall back inside the EAA's scope.
Three things the ruling does not mean:
- It does not mean Auchan is accessible. The court explicitly found the site is not.
- It does not mean accessibility obligations vanish for sub-€250M businesses. The Web Accessibility Directive and other domestic regimes still apply.
- It does not change the 28 June 2025 EAA effective date. The Act is in force.
The court did not rule that Auchan is accessible. It ruled that Auchan is too small for one French law to apply. That is a very different finding, and it is being appealed.
The three pending cases
The same disability associations are running cases against three other defendants. None have yet been heard substantively.
- E.Leclerc. Hearing rescheduled to 22 September 2026 in Créteil after multiple postponements. No ruling expected before late autumn 2026.
- Carrefour. No confirmed hearing date in open sources as of 13 May 2026.
- Picard Surgelés. No confirmed hearing date in open sources as of 13 May 2026.
Each of the four defendants is a different size. The Auchan E-Commerce entity reported around €182M revenue in 2023. Carrefour Group reports roughly €90 billion globally. E.Leclerc reports roughly €60 billion globally. Picard sits in the lower hundreds of millions for the relevant entity. If the threshold question is decisive in the appeal, the rulings on Carrefour and E.Leclerc will look very different from Auchan. Those defendants clear the €250M domestic line by an order of magnitude on any reasonable read of the corporate structure.
The Lille ruling does not legally bind the other tribunals. Each French court can read the threshold issue independently. But a published first-instance ruling sets a reference point that defendants and judges will return to. The Cour d'appel de Douai's decision, when it lands, will in practical terms become the authority for the rest of the docket.
There is a second layer worth flagging. Even if Douai upholds Lille's reading and €250M remains the threshold in France for the Loi 2005-102 obligation, that does not protect Carrefour or E.Leclerc. Both clear that line many times over at group level. Their substantive accessibility will be tested on the merits. The Lille ruling, if it stands, only buys exit room for the Auchan-sized defendant. The largest defendants in the docket cannot use this off-ramp.
AUDITSU will track all four rulings and update this post as decisions are published.
What's happening elsewhere in Europe
The wider enforcement picture remains in early posture. Frameworks are live across the EU. Public actions are rare or unpublicised. France's litigation route, driven by disability associations rather than regulators, is the most active enforcement signal in any member state.
A short tour of what has moved in 2026:
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Sweden. PTS (Post- och telestyrelsen)(opens in new tab) expanded its supervisory programme from 28 to 39 e-commerce sites in March 2026, adding Ellos, KappAhl, Apotea, Åhléns, Mathem, Apotek Hjärtat, Kronans Apotek, and Hemköp among others. The programme remains web-only. No published decisions, corrective orders, or sanctions as of May 2026. PTS has indicated mobile app inspections are next, but no formal announcement has been made.
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Germany. The Marktüberwachungsstelle der Länder für Barrierefreiheit (MLBF), the federal market surveillance authority for accessibility, has been operational since 26 September 2025 from its Magdeburg headquarters. As of Taylor Wessing's March 2026 review(opens in new tab), the MLBF had not launched public enforcement actions. The parallel private wave of Abmahnungen (warning letters under competition law) continues at firm-led pace.
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Italy. AgID(opens in new tab), Italy's digital agency (Agenzia per l'Italia Digitale), published technical accessibility guidelines for private-sector digital services on 4 March 2026. The guidelines set out what the authority will test against EN 301 549. No inspections or sanctions have been publicly announced. D.Lgs. 82/2022 carries maximum fines of €5,000 to €40,000 per violation. Companies above €500M revenue can be fined up to 5% of turnover.
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Spain. Ley 11/2023 has been in force since 28 June 2025 with penalty tiers up to €1,000,000 for very serious infringements. Multi-authority enforcement applies: OADIS (the Oficina de Accesibilidad Digital e Inclusión) for e-commerce, and sectoral bodies for finance, transport, and audiovisual. No public enforcement actions confirmed.
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Netherlands. Mandatory self-reporting began 15 October 2025. Taylor Wessing reports the ACM (Autoriteit Consument & Markt) "carrying out first audits and investigations" as of March 2026. Primary ACM confirmation of audit activity remains absent.
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Belgium, Denmark, Ireland. Frameworks transposed and in force. No public inspections or sanctions announced. Ireland uniquely pairs criminal liability (up to €60,000 fines and 18 months imprisonment for company officers) with civil penalties. No cases brought under the criminal provisions yet.
The pattern is consistent across borders. Legal frameworks live, authorities in guidance posture, formal enforcement actions either rare or unpublicised. The Auchan ruling and its appeal are the only court-tested cases anywhere in the EU. The full country-by-country penalty picture sits in our EAA fines breakdown.
What this means for mobile app operators
The honest read.
If you ship a mobile app in the EU and your business is over €2M turnover with 10 or more employees, the EAA applies to you regardless of how the Auchan appeal lands. The microenterprise exemption is narrow and specific. It is not a threshold of convenience.
The Auchan ruling is about a French domestic-law threshold, not the EU directive itself. Even if Douai upholds Lille, the €2M EU-level threshold still applies to French obligations under any EU-law-consistent interpretation. Operators reading the ruling as a green light to deprioritise accessibility are reading it wrong.
The substantive ruling is unflattering for Auchan. A French court has found, on the record, that one of France's largest retailers ships a site failing accessibility on 13 of 19 audited sections. That finding does not depend on the appeal. Public sector procurement processes, partnership conversations, and reputational exposure flow from the substance of the finding, not the threshold ruling that dismissed the case.
Web first, mobile next. Every public enforcement action in 2026 so far has targeted websites. PTS in Sweden has said apps follow. The French associations targeted both websites and apps in the original filings. Mobile audits should not wait for mobile-specific enforcement to start. The 6 elements an EAA-credible audit grades against are the same whether the surface is web or native.
Check where your app stands
AUDITSU produces a 6-element snapshot against EN 301 549, the standard the French and Swedish authorities are testing against. The snapshot is free and takes under a minute. £197 per month covers the full continuous audit when you decide to go deeper. No demo gating, no sales call before you see what we find.
Cour d'appel rulings on this kind of question typically take 12 to 18 months. Public regulators across the EU are likely to start naming defendants well before that. The companies that come out of 2026 with a credible accessibility statement and a continuous audit trail are not the ones waiting for the case law to settle.
Run an AUDITSU snapshot on your app. Public-facing apps and websites, no signup needed for the first scan.