I have questions I cannot answer yet. That’s the post.
On May 5th, 2026, a French court became the first court anywhere in the EU to rule on a case brought under a national transposition of the European Accessibility Act. The defendant was Auchan. The disability associations who brought the case – apiDV, Droit Pluriel, and Intérêt à Agir – lost.
The court found “fairly low” accessibility across the site. “Strong or major” failures across 13 of 19 audited sections.
Then dismissed the case anyway.
And I’ve been sitting with that, trying to figure out what to do with it.
What actually happened
Three French disability associations spent months doing everything right. They sent formal notices. They waited. The deadline passed. They filed. They showed up to court with an audit documenting failure across the majority of the site’s tested sections.
The court did not find that Auchan was accessible. It found a door.
Here’s the door: France has two overlapping legal regimes for digital accessibility. There’s the 2005 domestic law (Loi 2005-102) which applies to private companies above €250 million in revenue. And there’s France’s transposition of the EAA, which came into force in June 2025 and applies to covered products and services, including e-commerce.
The EAA threshold is “microenterprise.” Fewer than 10 employees. No more than €2 million in annual turnover or balance sheet total. That is a tiny-business exemption, not a mid-market escape hatch.
The Tribunal judiciaire de Lille read these two regimes as the same obligation and applied the higher domestic threshold. Auchan E-Commerce – the specific entity that was sued – reported €182 million in revenue in 2023. €144 million in 2024.
Below €250 million. Case dismissed.
The associations filed an appeal two days later.
The question I keep asking
The EAA exemption is for microenterprises.
Auchan E-Commerce did €182 million.
So how is this company below the threshold at all?
The answer is: under the EAA, it isn’t. The Lille court applied the older, higher domestic threshold instead – and the associations’ argument is that this is a wrong reading of EU law. The EAA-derived obligation should govern here. The domestic threshold should not be allowed to swallow the newer consumer-law obligation. As a matter of EU-law logic, that is a very strange place to land: a national threshold should not be able to swallow the scope of the directive it was meant to implement. If the €250 million threshold were allowed to stand, France would have failed to transpose the EAA for an entire band of mid-market retailers – every company between €2 million and €250 million sitting in a legal gap: in scope under the directive, out of scope under the French domestic reading.
That gap could trigger EU infringement proceedings against France. It’s easy to see why the associations think this ruling is wrong and why they’re fighting it.
But.
But.
Here’s the question I cannot stop thinking about.
Auchan Group is one of the largest retailers in France. Auchan Group clears €250 million many, many times over. The entity that got sued – Auchan E-Commerce – is a separate corporate structure that happens to sit below the domestic threshold.
I don’t know when that structure was established. And maybe the EAA had nothing to do with it.
Because if France’s older digital accessibility law only applied above €250 million, the incentive already existed – long before June 2025. Any large group with an e-commerce arm had a reason to ask a very simple question: which legal entity owns the inaccessible bit? The EAA may not have created that question. It may simply have walked into a room where the answer was already on the wall.
Which means the memo I’m imagining might not be recent at all:
Don’t fix the site. Don’t restructure the obligation. Keep the entity under the line. Then argue the law doesn’t reach you.
I am not saying that is what happened. I am saying the structure creates that possibility. And if the appeal goes the wrong way, that possibility becomes a strategy guide.
The person trying to buy groceries
Before we go further into the legal architecture: disabled shoppers do not buy groceries from a legal entity. They use a website. They open an app. They try to choose food, book a delivery slot, and pay.
If that flow doesn’t work – if the site has “strong or major” failures across 13 of 19 sections – the harm isn’t theoretical. It’s a person who couldn’t check out. Who couldn’t compare prices. Who couldn’t complete a task that everyone else does without thinking about it.
The court’s ruling doesn’t change that. Auchan’s website is documented as inaccessible. The ruling just found a door that meant the company didn’t have to fix it. Not yet. Not under this case.
That’s the part I keep coming back to. The legal question is about thresholds. The human question is about whether disabled people can buy their groceries. Those two things are not as separate as a case dismissal makes them sound.
Why the appeal is everything
The Cour d’appel de Douai will decide which threshold applies. That decision will set the terms for EAA enforcement in France – and since this is the only EAA case that’s reached a court anywhere in the EU, everyone is watching.
If Douai overturns Lille: the €2 million threshold applies, Auchan is back in scope, the law has teeth, and the accessibility obligations the EAA was supposed to create are real.
If Douai upholds Lille: France has effectively carved out the entire mid-market from EAA enforcement. Companies between €2 million and €250 million owe nothing under the domestic reading. The EU could open infringement proceedings against France – but that takes years, and the lobbying clock starts running the same day.
There are three more cases in the same coordinated legal push: E.Leclerc, Carrefour, and Picard. The first two clear €250 million by enormous margins at group level – the threshold argument doesn’t help them regardless. Their substantive accessibility will be tested on the merits. So the question of whether the EAA has teeth isn’t fully answered by the Auchan ruling even in the worst case.
But Auchan is the case that sets the frame. Auchan is the one that tells us whether the EU’s first major accessibility enforcement legislation can be structured around.
The thing I keep coming back to
When the Volkswagen emissions scandal broke, the story wasn’t just that a company cheated. It was that the cheating revealed something about how compliance works when the cost of failing it is high enough. You don’t always try to meet the standard. Sometimes you find the conditions under which the test doesn’t apply.
I’m not saying Auchan committed fraud. I’m saying both stories depend on the same uncomfortable question: what happens when compliance becomes a game of finding the test conditions?
The EAA is supposed to be the moment Europe got serious about digital accessibility. June 2025. The directive is in force. The obligation is real.
Except the first time someone tested it in court, the defendant won on a reading that – if it stands – rewards companies for staying just small enough in the right entity structure.
I don’t think it will stand. The appeal is strong. The legal reasoning should point one way.
But the gap existed. One court found it and used it. And the precedent of looking for it – of corporate structure as accessibility loophole – is the thing I can’t get out of my head.
I’m watching the appeal.
The appeal was filed May 7, 2026 to the Cour d’appel de Douai. Rulings at this level typically take 12 to 18 months. I’ll update when there’s something to update.