"Several calls a day, it was hell": Parliament ratifies the ban on non-consensual telephone canvassing

An end will soon be paid to unwanted calls seeking to "take advantage of state aid" or "change providers": Parliament definitively ratified the ban on telephone canvassing without consumer consent on Wednesday. A final vote in the Senate on a bill against "state aid fraud" brought this initiative to fruition, after lengthy back-and-forth debates in both houses of Parliament.

The idea is simple: prohibit companies from soliciting by telephone "directly or through a third party acting on its behalf" a person "who has not previously expressed their consent" in a "free, specific, informed, unequivocal and revocable" manner.

It will be up to the company to prove that the consumer has clearly expressed their consent to be contacted by telephone. The only exception is when the solicitation occurs "as part of the execution of an ongoing contract." According to a survey conducted by UFC-Que Choisir in October 2024, 97% of French people say they are annoyed by commercial canvassing.

Like Lucie Kapfer, 43: "The first calls were initially about the Personal Training Account (CPF). Then the canvassing continued, several times a week," explains the woman who has removed her landline in an attempt to limit these calls. "But they continued on my cell phone. Several calls a day, it was hellish," she laments, because the canvassers "call with 03, 02, and even 06 numbers. It's much harder to recognize them."

The measure was adopted in the Senate in November at the initiative of Horizons Senator Pierre-Jean Verzelen, then in a dedicated text taken up in the National Assembly in March. It has finally reached the end of its legislative journey through its inclusion, through an amendment by Green Party MP Delphine Batho, in this broader text, supported by the government.

"We're tired of being constantly sold heat pumps and windows," said Amélie de Montchalin, Minister of Public Accounts, welcoming a measure that will protect "the most vulnerable, the elderly, those who sometimes don't realize that this telephone harassment is nothing more than a showcase for enormous fraud and theft schemes."

The parliamentarians wanted to react because the current system, Bloctel, which requires consumers to register on a list if they want to be spared from canvassing, has not proven effective.

Denis Grugeon, 46, was registered with Bloctel but regularly received calls from canvassers. So he "made a radical decision: to refuse all calls from numbers not registered in my address book," he says. The law also prohibits commercial prospecting by electronic means—email, text messages, social media, etc.—in the energy renovation and home adaptation sectors.

This text corresponds "to a long-standing consumer demand" and puts an end to "a method of commercial prospecting that no longer has any place," says Benjamin Recher, head of institutional relations at UFC-Que Choisir. The text provides for this system to come into effect in August 2026.

A delay regretted by some parliamentarians, while others would have preferred to see an exception voted by the Assembly maintained for food companies, for example those delivering frozen food to individuals. The agreement reached by deputies and senators in the joint committee "was to say that stakeholders would have a year to organize themselves, but that no exceptions would be made" for any sector, Pierre-Jean Verzelen explained to AFP.

The text also includes an "arsenal" to "effectively combat public aid fraud," which represents around 1.6 billion euros each year, according to Macronist MP Thomas Cazenave, who introduced the text in the Assembly.

Among these measures: electricity and gas distribution network managers will be able to "directly sanction when they find that a consumer has misused a meter," the MP specifies.

Furthermore, the administration may suspend the granting or payment of public aid for a renewable period of three months, in the event of "serious indications" of fraud.

Two measures decried by La France Insoumise, which, in the name of "respect for the presumption of innocence" and the "separation of powers," has already announced that it will file an appeal with the Constitutional Council.