EAA Fines by Country: Penalties Across All 27 EU Member States

What the European Accessibility Act’s penalties are in each of the 27 EU member states — sourced from each country’s own law.

Last updated August 2026 · Every figure checked against the national law it comes from

The short version

• There’s no single EU-wide fine. The European Accessibility Act tells each of the 27 countries to set their own penalties, so the amount depends entirely on which country you’re selling into.

• The ceilings range from about €1,500 (France) to €1,000,000 (Luxembourg) — a nearly 700× spread for breaking the same EU rules.

• Several countries set no fixed figure at all (Greece, Denmark, Finland, Malta, and Spain), leaving the amount to a court or regulator.

• A lot of the numbers you’ll find online are wrong. The Netherlands is widely quoted at €900,000 — the real accessibility ceiling is €103,000. France is quoted at €50,000 — it’s €1,500. We checked every figure against the actual national law.

• Almost no one has been fined yet. The rules only became enforceable on 28 June 2025, so for now these are the penalties on the books, not fines that have been handed out.

On this page

- What the EAA actually says about fines

- Three ways countries actually enforce

- EAA penalties by country: the full comparison

- The numbers everyone gets wrong

- Every country, in plain terms

- The 700× gap: highest vs. lowest

- Have any EAA fines actually been issued yet?

- The countries with no fixed fine

- Why so many published figures are wrong

- Frequently asked questions

What the EAA actually says about fines:

The European Accessibility Act is a directive, not a regulation — and that distinction is the whole reason this page exists. A directive doesn’t apply directly. It sets the goal and hands each country the job of writing its own law to reach it, including the penalties. The Act’s entire instruction on fines is one short passage, Article 30:

“Member States shall lay down rules on penalties applicable to infringements of the national provisions adopted pursuant to this Directive… The penalties provided for shall be effective, proportionate and dissuasive.”

— Article 30, Directive (EU) 2019/882 (EUR-Lex)

That’s it. Three words — effective, proportionate and dissuasive — and the actual numbers, the enforcing bodies, and the way fines are calculated were all left to the 27 national governments. Article 30 adds only two things: a fine has to reflect how bad the breach is, and paying it doesn’t let you off the hook — you still have to make the product or service accessible. So when you see “the EAA fine is €X,” treat it as a warning sign. There is no EAA fine. There are 27 national penalty regimes, and they look nothing alike.

Three ways countries actually enforce:

Once you get past the individual numbers, the 27 regimes fall into three basic types. Knowing which one you’re dealing with tells you more about your real exposure than any single figure — because a “small” fine that repeats every day can cost more than a big one-off ceiling.

1. A fixed maximum fine. The most common setup: the law names a top figure. Luxembourg (up to €500,000, doubling to €1,000,000 for repeat offences), Croatia (€132,720) and Ireland (€60,000 plus possible jail time) work this way. The number is a ceiling, not a set price — the actual fine is scaled to the breach — but at least you know the worst case in advance.

2. A recurring “until you fix it” fine. Finland, Sweden and Estonia lean on penalties designed to force a fix rather than punish the past. These often have no real ceiling, because they repeat — daily, or per period — until you comply. A €1,000-a-day penalty is small on paper and enormous if you ignore it for a year.

3. No fixed figure at all. Greece, Denmark, Malta and Spain don’t name an amount. A court or regulator sets it case by case, guided only by that “proportionate” principle from Article 30. A missing number isn’t a loophole — it means the ceiling is effectively open.

Two countries don’t fit any box. Poland ties its fine to a formula (a national wage figure × 10, capped at 10% of turnover), and Italy links it to turnover. Both behave like fixed-ceiling systems but produce a different number for every company.

EAA Penalties by country: the full comparison:

All 27 EU member states, with the headline penalty and enforcement model. Each country’s mechanism is explained in the section below.

Austria: Up to €80,000 (large) / €50,000 (SME) — Fixed ceiling

Belgium: €208 – €80,000 — Fixed band

Bulgaria: Tiered fines (BGN), 2025 law — Fixed / tiered

Croatia: Up to €132,720 — Fixed (role-tiered)

Cyprus: €20,000 admin + €30,000 / 3 yrs criminal — Admin + criminal

Czechia: Up to ~€400,000 (CZK 10m) — Fixed ceiling

Denmark: No fixed figure (court-set) — Discretionary

Estonia: Coercive up to €10,000 + punitive — Coercive

Finland: Uncapped “until you comply” fine — Coercive

France: €1,500 — Fixed

Germany: Up to €100,000 (+ competitor lawsuits) — Fixed + litigation

Greece: No fixed figure (proportionate) — Discretionary

Hungary: Set via the 2012 consumer-protection law — Cross-referenced

Ireland: €60,000 + up to 18 months — Fixed + criminal

Italy: €5,000 – €40,000 — Tiered

Latvia: Up to €20,000 (via Conformity Assessment Law) — Cross-referenced

Lithuania: €500 – €15,000 — Fixed band

Luxembourg: Up to €500,000 (€1m repeat) — Fixed ceiling

Malta: No figure specified — Unspecified

Netherlands: Up to €103,000 — Fixed ceiling

Poland: Formula (national wage ×10, ≤10% turnover) — Formula

Portugal: Tiered administrative fines — Tiered

Romania: Ten violation bands (lei) — Tiered

Slovakia: Two parallel systems — Parallel

Slovenia: Size-tiered ceilings — Size-tiered

Spain: No fixed figure (defers; up to €1m fallback) — Discretionary

Sweden: Up to SEK 10m (~€900,000) + open-ended vite — Coercive + capped

Figures are the statutory maximums or mechanisms in each national law. “No fixed figure” means the law sets a discretionary or open-ended penalty rather than a stated ceiling.

The numbers everyone gets wrong:

Because you have to read each country’s own law — often in its own language, often pointing to a second law — most published “EAA fine” figures are copied from each other and wrong. Here are the four worst offenders, with the actual statute in each case.

Netherlands — Quoted at €900,000. It's €103,000.

This is the one nearly everyone gets wrong. The Dutch EAA law doesn’t set a fine itself — it routes enforcement into the Commodities Act (Warenwet). That Act has two different ceilings, and the accessibility one is deliberately the lower of the two:

“The administrative fine… shall not exceed the amount determined for the fifth category” — Warenwet, Art. 35e(2)

The fifth category of the Criminal Code is €103,000 (2024). The €900,000 everyone quotes is the sixth category — which applies to general product-safety breaches, not accessibility — and it’s even out of date (it’s now €1,030,000). Two errors in one number. Source: Warenwet.

France — Quoted at €50,000. It's €1,500.

France’s EAA penalty runs through the minor-offence (contravention) system, not the big administrative-fine schedule people assume:

“A 5th-class contravention carries a maximum fine of €1,500 (€3,000 for a repeat offence)” — French Penal Code, Art. 131-13

The €50,000 figure comes from confusing this with the separate public-sector website schedule run by the regulator Arcom. Different track, different law. Source: Légifrance.

Sweden — Quoted as “No fixed fine” It has one.

Sweden is often lumped in with the no-figure countries. Its law actually sets a capped sanction fee:

“The sanction fee shall be set at no less than SEK 10,000 and no more than SEK 10,000,000” — Lag (2023:254), § 39

That’s roughly €900 to €900,000, on top of a separate open-ended “until you comply” penalty (vite). Source: Riksdagen.

Hungary — The fine Isn't in the accesibility law at all.

Hungary’s 2022 Accessibility Act tells you, in Section 7, that the real obligations and penalties live in a different law — the 2012 Act on Market Surveillance of Products — which in turn leaves the actual amount to a government decree. Any source quoting a neat Hungarian euro figure hasn’t followed the trail. Source: Act XVII of 2022.

Every country, in plain terms

Each entry summarizes the mechanism and the headline figure, traced to the national law it comes from.

- Austria — Size-based ceilings: up to €80,000 for large companies, €50,000 for SMEs.

- Belgium — Fines from €208 to €80,000, reached by applying statutory multipliers to two sanction bands.

- Bulgaria — Transposed late (2025); penalties are set in tiers in Bulgarian lev under that law.

- Croatia — Up to €132,720, with different ceilings for manufacturers, importers and distributors.

- Cyprus — Two tracks side by side: administrative fines up to €20,000, plus a criminal route of up to €30,000 and three years.

- Czechia — A purely administrative ceiling of CZK 10 million (about €400,000) — no criminal track.

- Denmark — No fixed figure; a court sets the amount. We confirmed the absence of a stated ceiling across multiple checks.

- Estonia — A coercive fine up to €10,000 to force compliance, kept separate from punitive fines.

- Finland — An “until you comply” fine with no ceiling by design — it repeats until you fix the problem.

- France — €1,500 (€3,000 for repeat offences) — not the €50,000 widely quoted online.

- Germany — Up to €100,000 for the core breaches, plus a real risk of competitor lawsuits (the Abmahnung system).

- Greece — No fixed figure; the law requires only that penalties be proportionate.

- Hungary — The penalty isn’t in the accessibility act — it’s set via the 2012 market-surveillance law and a government decree.

- Ireland — Up to €60,000 plus up to 18 months’ imprisonment, with directors personally on the hook.

- Italy — Tiered administrative fines of €5,000–€40,000 for accessibility breaches (plus €2,500–€30,000 for failing to cooperate).

- Latvia — Up to €20,000, set not in the accessibility law but through a cross-referenced conformity-assessment law.

- Lithuania — €500 to €15,000, tightened by amendments that took effect in April 2026.

- Luxembourg — The EU’s highest ceiling: up to €500,000, doubling to €1,000,000 for repeat offences.

- Malta — No figure specified; the law defers the amount downstream, so any euro figure attributed to Malta is unsupported.

- Netherlands — Up to €103,000 — not the €900,000 you’ll see quoted almost everywhere.

- Poland — No flat maximum: the fine is a formula — the national average wage × 10, capped at 10% of turnover.

- Portugal — Tiered administrative fines, and the only country to spell out its “disproportionate burden” criteria in a dedicated order.

- Romania — Ten separate violation categories, each with its own band in Romanian lei.

- Slovakia — Two parallel penalty systems running at once — a consumer-protection track and a media track.

- Slovenia — Ceilings that rise with company size, so bigger companies face higher maximums.

- Spain — No national figure. Sanctions follow each sector’s own rules, with the general disability law (fines up to €1,000,000) as a fallback, enforced by the regions.

- Sweden — A capped sanction fee up to about €900,000 (SEK 10m), plus an open-ended “until you comply” penalty.

The 700X gap: Highest VS. Lowest.

For breaking the exact same EU rules, what you risk depends almost entirely on your postcode.

At the top, Luxembourg stands alone: up to €500,000, doubling to €1,000,000 for a repeat offence. Behind it sit Czechia (~€400,000), Croatia (€132,720) and Germany (€100,000).

At the bottom, France’s €1,500 is the lowest fixed figure in the Union — which is exactly why the €50,000 number attached to it online is so misleading.

But the ceilings only tell half the story. Two mechanisms can quietly outrun every figure above:

- Turnover-linked fines. Poland (national wage × 10, capped at 10% of turnover) and Italy scale with company size, so for a large business they can exceed a flat ceiling.

- “Until you comply” fines. Finland’s and Sweden’s recurring penalties have no practical cap — left unfixed, a modest daily figure compounds past any one-off maximum.

The countries with no fixed fine

Five countries — Greece, Denmark, Malta, Spain and Finland — don’t give you a maximum euro figure. This is the single biggest source of made-up numbers online, because when there’s no figure to report, weaker sources invent one. Here’s what “no fixed fine” actually means in each case, and it isn’t the same thing:

- Greece and Denmark leave the amount to a regulator or court, guided only by the “proportionate” principle. No minimum, no maximum.

- Malta points to a further regulation to set the amount — one that doesn’t appear to exist yet. So there’s genuinely no number in force.

- Spain sets no national figure of its own: it defers to each sector’s rules, with the general disability law (fines up to €1,000,000) as a fallback, and enforcement handled region by region.

- Finland does have a mechanism — the “until you comply” fine — but by design it has no ceiling, so there’s no single maximum to quote either.

The takeaway runs against intuition: no stated ceiling usually means more uncertainty, not less. An open-ended figure a court sets after the fact is harder to plan around than a known maximum.

WHY SO MANY PUBLISHED FIGURES ARE WRONG

Because the EAA hands penalties to national law, checking a figure means reading the actual national statute — and that’s where most sources give up. Three traps catch them:

- The figure is in another language. Most of these laws exist only in Bulgarian, Greek, Finnish, and so on. Secondary sites lift each other’s numbers rather than read the source.

- The figure is in a second law. Hungary’s penalties sit in its 2012 market-surveillance act, not its accessibility act. Latvia’s are in a conformity-assessment law. The Netherlands’ are in the Commodities Act and the Criminal Code. Miss the cross-reference and you get the wrong number — or none.

- The wrong figure gets attached to the right country. The Netherlands is the clearest case: the widely-quoted €900,000 is a real number from Dutch law — just not the accessibility one.

Every figure on this page was checked against the national law it comes from. Where a country genuinely has no figure, we say so rather than fill the gap with a guess.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Is there a single EU-wide EAA fine?

No. The European Accessibility Act requires each of the 27 member states to set its own penalties. They must be “effective, proportionate and dissuasive,” but the amounts and mechanisms differ in every country.

What is the highest EAA fine?

Luxembourg has the highest fixed ceiling: up to €500,000, doubling to €1,000,000 for repeat offences. Turnover-linked regimes in Poland and Italy can go higher for a very large company, because a percentage of turnover has no absolute cap.

Which countries have no fixed EAA fine?

Greece, Denmark, Malta, Spain and Finland don’t set a fixed euro maximum — they use discretionary, deferred, or open-ended penalties instead.

Is the French EAA fine really €50,000?

No. France’s penalty is €1,500 (€3,000 for a repeat offence). The €50,000 figure online confuses it with a separate public-sector website regime.

Is the Dutch EAA fine really €900,000?

No. The accessibility ceiling in the Netherlands is €103,000. The €900,000 figure comes from a different, general product-safety provision — not the accessibility one.

When did EAA penalties start applying?

The rules became enforceable on 28 June 2025. Few regulator fines have been issued yet, but court cases (such as the Carrefour ruling in France) have already begun.

HOW WE CHECKED THESE FIGURES

Every figure on this page was read out of the national statute itself, in its original language, and cross-checked against the official source where one is published online. Where a country’s penalty lives in a second law — Hungary’s, Latvia’s, the Netherlands’ — we followed the cross-reference rather than repeating the number other sites use. Where a country genuinely sets no figure, we say so.

Country-by-country breakdowns, each with the exact statutory wording and the enforcing authority, are being published next.

We update this page whenever a national law changes or a new enforcement action lands. (Last reviewed: August 2026.)