The European Commission has referred France to the Court of Justice of the European Union for enforcing nation-specific labelling requirements for waste sorting instructions, allegedly preventing the free movement of goods across the continent and violating EU law.
In France, household products held to an extended producer responsibility (EPR) scheme must be labelled with the ‘Triman’ logo. This informs consumers that the product falls under sorting rules, while the ‘infotri’ label indicates the appropriate sorting methods.
This system of labels is only used in France, and is therefore accused of preparing products for circulation on the French market only. The Commission describes these requirements as ‘disproportionate’ when other methods that are ‘less restrictive of trade between Member States’ are available for use until the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation eventually harmonizes labelling measures across the EU.
As such, it accuses France of infringing Articles 34-36 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union by failing to address the shortcomings of its labelling requirements where they relate to waste sorting instructions.
The Commission adds that France has violated notification obligations under Directive (EU) 2015/1535, or the Single Market Transparency Directive, since the measure was not raised with the Commission at a draft stage before it was adopted.
After sending a letter of formal notice and reasoned opinion over the same issue in February 2023 and November 2024, respectively, the Commission has escalated the case to the Court of Justice.
In its recent Communication COM(2025)500, titled The Single Market: our European home market in an uncertain world, the Commission expresses its intent to ‘[remove] barriers that significantly hamper the ability of European companies to benefit from the Single Market, for the benefit of the EU economy and consumers’.
This development comes after the Commission launched an infringement procedure against every EU Member State for missing legally binding collection and recycling targets, such as the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive’s expectation that countries recycle between 55% and 80% of their packaging waste by the end of 2008. Within this were minimum thresholds of 60% for glass, paper and cardboard; 50% for metals; 22.5% for plastics; and 15% for wood.
More recently, the EFTA Surveillance Authority referred Iceland to the EFTA Court for allegedly failing to enforce rules to prevent packaging waste, regulate the types of packaging brought to market, and manage operations at landfill sites – thus violating Articles 28 and 29 of the Waste Framework Directive.
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