A year after the European Accessibility Act's application date of 28 June 2025, EAA enforcement is real but uneven. It has not arrived as a wave of automatic fines. Instead the first year produced two things: court cases brought by disability organisations, and market-surveillance programmes run by national regulators that have moved from setting up to actually auditing. In France, a court ordered Carrefour to make its e-commerce site and app accessible within six months (Deque). In Sweden, the telecom regulator opened dozens of supervisory investigations into online shops (Eye-Able). The obligation under the EAA is live and being tested, but how it lands still depends heavily on which country you sell into. This post walks through what has actually happened, who is doing the enforcing, what the penalties look like in practice, and what it means for your own site.
Has EAA enforcement actually started?
Yes, though not in the shape most headlines predicted. The EAA (Directive (EU) 2019/882) does not come with a central EU regulator or a single fine schedule. Each member state designates its own authorities and sets its own penalties, which the directive only requires to be "effective, proportionate and dissuasive" (Article 30). So "enforcement" in year one means 27 separate national systems, most of which spent late 2025 building capacity and are now starting to use it.
Two tracks emerged. The first is litigation, led not by governments but by disability associations using the courts. The second is administrative market surveillance, where regulators inspect websites, open cases, and set remediation deadlines. Both are running now. Neither has produced the mass penalties some vendors warned about, and honest reporting should say so plainly.
What did the French court rulings decide?
France produced the first EAA-related court decisions anywhere in the EU, and they cut in different directions.
In July 2025, the associations apiDV and Droit Pluriel sent formal legal notices (mises en demeure) to four large grocery retailers: Auchan, Carrefour, E.Leclerc, and Picard. When the sites did not change, the associations took the cases to court (Silktide).
The Carrefour case went against the retailer. On 4 June 2026, the Tribunal judiciaire de Caen ordered Carrefour France to make its website and mobile application accessible within six months, with a daily financial penalty (astreinte) for each day of delay after that. Carrefour had argued its site was already 71% accessible; the court rejected the idea of partial compliance, holding that the service must be genuinely accessible rather than somewhat accessible (Deque, Intérêt à Agir). Carrefour said it had a remediation plan targeting full accessibility by the end of 2026.
The Auchan case went the other way, and the reason matters. It was transferred to Lille, heard in March 2026, and dismissed in May 2026 on a procedural point about which French law applied. France's 2005 domestic accessibility law (Loi 2005-102) attaches its obligation to businesses above a €250 million revenue threshold, while France's transposition of the EAA carries the directive's €2 million microenterprise cut-off. The Lille tribunal read the two regimes as overlapping and applied the higher domestic threshold, so Auchan's site fell outside the obligation the associations relied on. The court still noted the site did not conform, which Auchan did not dispute, and the associations are appealing to the Cour d'appel de Douai (Silktide).
The honest read: one clear win, one dismissal on a national-law technicality that is now under appeal. The threshold off-ramp is specific to France's older statute and does not reflect the EAA's own scope, so it is not a template other businesses can count on.
Which regulators are running market surveillance?
Alongside the courts, several national authorities have started administrative enforcement, and Sweden is the clearest example. The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority (Post- och telestyrelsen, or PTS) began inspecting digital services in October 2025 and had launched 28 supervisory investigations, including audits of major online retailers, with each review focused on a site's homepage, a product page, and its search function. PTS had also received 124 public complaints, 110 about services (mostly e-retail sites) and 14 about products such as ATMs (Eye-Able). The programme is designed to run through 2026, and companies that receive an inspection notice are given a deadline to fix what's found.
The Netherlands is on a similar path. The Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) ran a window for operators to self-report non-conformance into late 2025, then shifted toward first audits and investigations in 2026 (Deque). Other member states are earlier in the same cycle. The pattern across the EU is a move from information-gathering toward supervision, not a sudden switch to sanctions.
What are the penalties, really?
This is where drama and reality part company. There is no EU-wide fine figure. Penalties are defined in each country's transposition, so the number that could apply to you depends entirely on where your customer sits, and many authorities have not published any penalty decisions yet.
What year one shows is that the real teeth so far are court orders with deadlines, not headline fines. The Carrefour order is the clearest example: a fixed period to remediate, followed by a per-day astreinte if the deadline is missed (Deque). Administrative regulators are working the same way, issuing remediation deadlines before any question of a penalty arises. If you want a realistic picture of your exposure, the useful question isn't "what's the maximum fine" but "if a regulator or an association looked at my checkout tomorrow, what would they find, and could I show a plan."
There's a second, opposite risk that the first year underlined: overstating your compliance. In April 2025 the US Federal Trade Commission finalised an order requiring the overlay vendor accessiBe to pay $1 million over claims that its product could make any website conformant (FTC). The lesson travels across the Atlantic. Claiming a level of conformance you can't back up is its own liability, separate from the accessibility work itself.
Does this change what you should do?
Not the fundamentals, but it does raise the value of having evidence. The standard behind the EAA is still EN 301 549, whose current referenced version incorporates WCAG 2.1 Level AA for web content, and meeting the relevant clauses gives a presumption of conformity. The Carrefour ruling is a reminder that "mostly accessible" is not a safe resting place: a self-reported 71% did not satisfy the court.
Getting a real picture takes two layers. Automated scanning catches the high-frequency, machine-detectable defects fast, but only part of the total. Deque's analysis of more than 2,000 audits found automation identified about 57% of issues by volume, while estimates counting the share of WCAG success criteria put it closer to 30% (Deque). The remaining gap only closes with manual review, so a scanner is the start of the evidence trail, not the whole of it. Our WCAG checklist covers the manual part a scanner can't judge.
The practical move for year two is straightforward. Scan your key pages, run a manual pass on the flows a scanner can't judge (completing checkout with a keyboard, sensible focus order, form errors announced), triage the serious issues first, and publish an honest accessibility statement that records where you are and what you're doing about it. Documented, ongoing effort is a defensible position. A confident claim you can't support is the one that gets tested.
Frequently asked questions
Is the EAA being enforced yet?
Yes. A year after the 28 June 2025 application date, enforcement is active through both court cases brought by disability associations and administrative market surveillance by national regulators, though it varies by country and has not taken the form of mass automatic fines.
What did the French Carrefour ruling decide?
On 4 June 2026 the Tribunal judiciaire de Caen ordered Carrefour France to make its website and mobile app accessible within six months, with a daily penalty for delay after that, rejecting Carrefour's argument that a partially accessible site was enough.
Why was the Auchan case dismissed?
It was dismissed in May 2026 on a procedural point about which French law applied, with the Lille tribunal using France's older €250 million revenue threshold rather than the EAA's €2 million cut-off. The associations are appealing to the Cour d'appel de Douai.
Who enforces the EAA in each country?
Each member state designates its own authorities and sets its own penalties. In Sweden, for example, the telecom regulator PTS supervises digital services; penalties differ from one national transposition to the next.
What are the actual penalties for non-compliance?
They are set nationally, not by the EU, and must be effective, proportionate, and dissuasive. In practice the clearest enforcement so far has been court-ordered remediation deadlines with daily penalties for delay, rather than published one-off fines.
See where your site actually stands
The lesson from year one is that "mostly accessible" doesn't hold up under scrutiny, so it helps to know where you really are. Run a free scan to surface the machine-detectable issues on your key pages, then work through the manual checklist for what a scanner can't judge. You'll have a real picture to act on, and the evidence to write an honest accessibility statement instead of a guess.
Pavel Charkasau, founder, wcagc.com. Last updated 6 July 2026.
Sources
- Directive (EU) 2019/882 (European Accessibility Act), EUR-Lex — Article 30 (effective, proportionate, dissuasive penalties; national enforcement), Article 31 (application date). Accessed 6 July 2026.
- France's major court decision supporting digital accessibility under the EAA, Deque — Carrefour ruling by the Tribunal judiciaire de Caen, six-month deadline, daily penalty, 71% claim rejected. Accessed 6 July 2026.
- Décision Carrefour, Intérêt à Agir — the associations' account of the Carrefour ruling. Accessed 6 July 2026.
- The first EAA court ruling went to the defendant, Silktide — French formal notices, the Auchan dismissal in Lille, and the €250 million vs €2 million threshold question. Accessed 6 July 2026.
- Sweden audits online shops for digital accessibility, Eye-Able — PTS supervisory investigations, retailer audits, 124 public complaints. Accessed 6 July 2026.
- Early signs of EAA enforcement across Europe, Deque — Netherlands ACM and cross-member-state surveillance. Accessed 6 July 2026.
- FTC approves final order requiring accessiBe to pay $1 million, Federal Trade Commission — deceptive conformance claims. Accessed 6 July 2026.
- Automated testing identifies 57% of accessibility issues, Deque — automated coverage figures. Accessed 6 July 2026.