The arrêté of 2 December 2025 decides it, and the test is about the packaging, not about who you invoice. Work through three steps in order: first check whether a product stream (lubricating oils, chemicals, building products, agricultural supplies) claims the packaging outright; then check the automatic lists, which put service packaging, e-commerce packaging to consumers and most glass in EMPAP, and pallets, IBCs, drums over 29 litres, crates over 15 litres and transport packaging in EPRO; and if neither list answers it, the répartition tables in the arrêté settle it by product type and volume. The exception that catches most online sellers: the carton you ship an online order to a consumer in is EMPAP, not EPRO, even though it is transport packaging.Sources (3)
ADEMEADEME — household or professional packaging: how to tellArrêté of 2 December 2025Arrêté of 2 December 2025 — packaging of products used by households and/or professionals
LégifranceLégifrance — article L. 541-10-9-1 of the Environmental Code (full text)
Why this question exists at all
France runs two separate packaging streams. EMPAP covers household packaging and graphic paper; EPRO covers professional packaging and starts operationally on 1 January 2027. They have different eco-organismes, different tariffs and different declarations, so putting a packaging item in the wrong one means declaring to the wrong scheme and paying the wrong contribution.
The instinct is to decide by customer: sell to consumers and it is household, sell to businesses and it is professional. That instinct is wrong often enough to be expensive. The arrêté of 2 December 2025 classifies the packaging itself, and ADEME publishes a dedicated page on the question precisely because the boundary catches people out.
Step 1 — does a product stream take it first?
Before EMPAP or EPRO, check whether the packaging belongs to a product stream in its own right. Packaging of lubricating oils, chemical products, building products and agricultural supplies, and refillable gas bottles for non-professional use, are handled by those streams. If yours is one of these, stop here and deal with that stream.
Step 2 — the automatic lists
Some packaging is assigned to a stream outright, whatever the product inside.
| Automatically EMPAP (household) | Automatically EPRO (professional) |
|---|---|
| Service packaging — filled at the point of sale: checkout bags, vending-machine cups, takeaway packaging | Large-capacity packaging — pallets and palletisation items (straps, interlayers), IBCs and big-bags, drums, jerricans and buckets over 29 litres, plastic crates and cagettes over 15 litres, octabins, gastronorm containers, caisses-marée, point-of-sale display with a packaging function |
| E-commerce packaging sent to private individuals — shipping cartons, mailers, void fill | Transport packaging — packaging that allows packaged products to be handled and moved |
| Grouped packaging that can be split at the point of sale — the film around a six-pack whose bottles can be sold singly | Grouped packaging — packaging that groups several packaged products together |
| Most glass packaging | Glass designed specifically for hospitals, laboratories, veterinary establishments or professional breeding, and glass for products sold exclusively to professionals |
The two exceptions that decide most online sellers
Read the middle two rows of that table together, because they contradict each other on purpose.
- Transport packaging is EPRO — except for e-commerce to consumers. The box, the mailer and the void fill you use to send an online order to a private individual are EMPAP. If you sell online to French consumers, your shipping packaging is household packaging, and the arrival of EPRO in 2027 does not change that.
- Grouped packaging is EPRO — except when it can be split at the point of sale. Film around a six-pack that a shop can break open to sell single bottles is EMPAP. Film around a pallet of cartons is EPRO.
Step 3 — the répartition tables
If neither list answers it, the arrêté's tables decide, and they turn mainly on the product inside, and its volume, weight or capacity. The pattern is a threshold: below it household, above it professional. To take the arrêté's own examples from cleaning and personal care:
| Packaged product | EMPAP (household) | EPRO (professional) |
|---|---|---|
| Cleaning and maintenance products (other than mechanical) | ≤ 5 L | > 5 L |
| Maintenance products for cycles, mopeds, motorcycles, cars | ≤ 5 L | > 5 L |
| Containers, basins | ≤ 15 L | > 15 L |
| High-pressure cleaners | ≤ 200 bar | > 200 bar |
| Hair care products | ≤ 5 L | > 5 L |
| Bath salts, scrubs, bubble bath | ≤ 10 L | > 10 L |
| Washing accessories, household sponges and cloths, household accessories | any size | — |
The tables run across many product families. Where your product is not listed, the decision falls back to the general definitions in steps 1 and 2.
The "exclusively professional" route, and its trap
A producer may declare sales packaging to EPRO where it meets two cumulative criteria: the packaging is designed exclusively for professional use, and the packaged product is not sold to private individuals by any market participant at all.
That second criterion is not about your own sales. ADEME gives the worked example: if producer A sells a packaged product only to professionals, but producer B sells the same packaged product to households, producer A cannot declare it to EPRO, because the second criterion fails. Whether your packaging qualifies can therefore depend on what a competitor does.
What this means in practice
- Online seller shipping to French consumers. Your shipping packaging is EMPAP. You are in the household stream now, not waiting for 2027.
- Supplier shipping palletised goods to French businesses. Pallets, straps, interlayers and stretch film are EPRO from 1 January 2027.
- Both channels. You will have obligations in both streams, declared separately. That is normal, not an error.
- Either way, the representative duty is unchanged. A producer not established in France needs a French mandataire for every stream it is caught by — article L. 541-10-9-1 applies to EPRO exactly as it applies to EMPAP.
Work out what it costs you
Once you know which stream a packaging item belongs to, the tariff follows from that stream's eco-organisme, and the two are priced differently. Three things on this site take it from here:
- The free calculator — enter your materials and weights and it returns the eco-contribution per stream, from the published tariffs.
- The 19 French EPR streams — which streams exist, who runs each one and which of them you are caught by.
- Market data — what every French EPR representative publishes as its price, re-checked daily with a public log, so the mandate cost is a figure rather than a quote.
The EPRO tariffs themselves come from Citeo Pro, Léko Pro and Twiice; we track them in the calculator rather than restating them here, because they change and a copied number goes stale.
Check it at source
ADEME publishes the decision procedure and the full répartition tables, and it is the competent authority here. Where your product sits near a threshold, read the arrêté rather than relying on a summary, including this one. For the dates that follow from the classification, see the deadlines page; for the wider EPRO regime, professional packaging EPR in France.
Frequently asked questions
My product is sold to both consumers and businesses. Which stream?
Both, potentially. The streams follow the packaging and the channel, not a single choice for the company. Packaging on goods reaching households is EMPAP; palletised or transport packaging to business customers is EPRO. You declare to each stream for the packaging that falls in it.
Does the e-commerce exception apply if I sell online to businesses?
No. The exception in the arrêté is for packaging used to ship e-commerce orders to private individuals. Shipping packaging on an online order to a business customer follows the ordinary transport-packaging rule, which is EPRO.
Is a pallet always EPRO?
Pallets and palletisation items are on the automatic EPRO list, together with straps and interlayers. The stream starts operationally on 1 January 2027.
Who decides if I get it wrong?
The eco-organismes and ADEME. Declaring packaging to the wrong stream means contributing to the wrong scheme, which has to be corrected rather than simply left. Where a product sits near a volume threshold in the répartition tables, it is worth checking the arrêté text itself.
Sources
- ADEME — household or professional packaging: how to tell
- Arrêté of 2 December 2025 — packaging of products used by households and/or professionals
- ADEME — professional packaging (EPRO) scheme page
- Légifrance — article L. 541-10-9-1 of the Environmental Code (full text)
Founder of EPR France Rep, the France-based EPR authorised representative for companies selling into France.
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