What is France's AGEC law?

AGEC is France's anti-waste and circular economy law, Loi n° 2020-105 of 10 February 2020. Its name comes from the French title, loi anti-gaspillage pour une économie circulaire. It touches almost every consumer product sold in France, from how it is labelled to what happens to unsold stock.

For brands, the most visible part is Article 13: a duty to publish environmental information about each product online, in a standard, machine-readable format. In many ways it is a national forerunner of the EU Digital Product Passport.

What the AGEC law covers

• Product environmental information (Article 13): a digital product sheet with the product's environmental qualities and characteristics.
• Sorting information: the Triman logo and sorting instructions on products and packaging covered by an EPR scheme.
• Repairability and durability scores: the French repairability index, now being replaced by a durability index for some products.
• A ban on destroying unsold non-food goods: they must be donated, reused or recycled.
• New EPR schemes (REP in French) for product groups such as toys, sports and leisure goods and DIY tools.
• Banned claims: "biodegradable", "environmentally friendly" and equivalent claims are prohibited on any product or packaging.

The AGEC product sheet

Décret n° 2022-748 sets what the product sheet must contain. Depending on the product category, it covers:

• Share of recycled content
• Use of renewable resources
• Recyclability
• Compostability, durability, repairability and reuse options, where relevant
• Presence of hazardous substances, which refers to the EU candidate list of substances of very high concern
• Presence of precious metals or rare earths, for electronics

Textiles and footwear add two items:

1. Traceability: the country of each main manufacturing step. For textiles, weaving or knitting, dyeing or printing, and making up. For footwear, stitching, assembly and finishing.
2. Microplastics: if the product is more than 50% synthetic fibres by weight, a statement that it releases plastic microfibers when washed.

The sheet must be available online at the time of purchase, in a format that machines can read and reuse. Traceability applies to each part that must be labelled under the EU Textile Labelling Regulation.

Who it applies to and when

The product sheet duty applies to producers, importers and other businesses placing new consumer products on the French market, phased by size:

Both thresholds apply together and cover all the products concerned. A retailer that sells products under its own brand counts as the producer for those products.

How AGEC relates to EU rules

AGEC came before most EU product transparency rules, and parts of it now overlap with them. The EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) will set passport requirements product group by product group, starting with textiles among its priorities. The Empowering Consumers Directive brings EU-wide limits on generic environmental claims from 27 September 2026. Brands selling in France should expect to keep meeting AGEC while the EU rules phase in, so collecting the data once and reusing it for both makes sense.

How to prepare

1. Check whether your French turnover and unit volumes pass the thresholds.
2. List the qualities required for each of your product categories.
3. Collect manufacturing countries, materials and recycled content from suppliers for every model.
4. Publish a product sheet per model, online and machine-readable, and keep it available.
5. Remove banned claims from products, packaging and marketing.