The French IDU: one seller, many filieres, one number each

France's answer to EPR registration is the identifiant unique, the IDU: a single number issued by ADEME through the SYDEREP system, one per EPR filiere (stream). Since 1 January 2022, every producer subject to a French EPR filiere needs an IDU for that filiere as its proof of registration.

One number per filiere, not one number for France

The design decision that trips up foreign sellers and platforms alike is that the IDU is per filiere. A seller of packaged electronic toys does not have 'a French EPR number': it holds an IDU for packaging and papers, an IDU for electronics, an IDU for toys, and so on. France operates more than 15 filieres, from packaging (EMPAP) and electronics (EEE) to textiles (TLC), toys (JOUET), sport and leisure (ASL) and building products (PMCB).

Why marketplaces care: liability, not courtesy

France did not wait for the PPWR. Under Article 62 of the AGEC law, marketplaces have been legally liable for their third-party sellers' EPR obligations since 2022. As AGN Avocats' analysis of marketplace duties under the REP filieres explains, platforms must keep a register of their sellers including the IDU and the volumes concerned, and a seller's valid IDU creates a presumption of conformity in the platform's favour. That presumption is the legal payoff of verification: hold a verified IDU per filiere and the compliance burden shifts back to the seller; hold nothing and the platform itself answers for the seller's eco-contributions.

In practice, non-compliant sellers get blocked, or the platform pays the eco-fees on their behalf and recharges them. Amazon industrialised exactly that: its French marketplace requires EPR numbers across 19 categories and operates a Pay on Behalf mechanism, charging unregistered sellers the eco-contributions plus a service fee, as documented in Amazon's own EPR compliance pages and in Bits & Atoms' comparison of the German and French regimes.

How to verify an IDU

France runs the most verification-friendly register in the EU, on two rails.

The public search engine

SYDEREP's public search lets anyone look up a producer and see its registrations, filiere by filiere. You can check any French IDU against the ADEME register for free, holder and status included.

The open dataset

Better for automation: ADEME publishes a full open-data list of producers with their IDUs, updated daily, as required by Article L.541-10-13 of the French environmental code. This is the strongest open-data implementation of PPWR Article 44(13)'s public, free, machine-readable principle anywhere in the EU today, and it means IDU verification can be fully automated, at daily freshness, with no scraping ambiguity.

A proper check mirrors the LUCID method (see how to check a LUCID number): format, existence, holder match, status on the date, and, specific to France, filiere match. An IDU for toys does not evidence packaging registration. Verifying that 'the seller has an IDU' without asking 'for which filiere' is the most common French verification mistake we see.

What non-compliance costs in France

Compliance providers cite administrative fines of up to EUR 30,000 for missing registration and IDU failures, and up to EUR 7,500 per product unit or tonne for other EPR breaches by legal persons, per RecycleMe France's IDU guide. The sharper commercial penalty usually arrives first: delisting, or compulsory enrolment in a pay-on-behalf scheme at penalty-grade rates.

The enforcement climate around marketplace sellers is not softening. The full cross-country picture is in EPR penalties by country.

The IDU under the PPWR

From 12 August 2026, PPWR Article 45 makes the obtain-and-assess duty EU-wide, but for France it changes surprisingly little: the marketplace liability, the seller register with IDUs, and the daily open data are already in place. What changes is the multiplier. A platform that has solved France still has 26 other member states, each with its own registers, and packaging is one stream among several. That multiplication, per seller, per stream, per country, is the workload EPR Clear absorbs.

You can check an IDU for free against the ADEME register, or get a free exposure scan to see every French filiere, and every other EU register, your seller file touches.

FAQ

Run the verification workflow as a service

Registration checks per seller, stream and member state, continuous revocation monitoring, and a timestamped evidence log that is your best-efforts record.