Filing your coût environnemental with the French State

What the coût environnemental is

The coût environnemental is France's official environmental-cost score for a garment sold on the French market. It is computed with the State's Ecobalyse methodology and expressed in impact points, where a lower score is better. It comes from Décret n° 2025-957. It is the State's method, not a private label or a marketing badge.

There is no blanket obligation to display a coût environnemental, and 1 October 2026 does not create one. The scheme stays voluntary. That date is not a filing deadline. What it changes is two risks, described below: a display duty if you publish a score of your own, and the right of anyone else to publish a score for you.

Filing is the answer to the second risk, though not an instant one — the other party has a month to fall into line. Against the first risk, filing is only the precondition: you still have to display the official score next to the number you already publish.

The first risk is the display coupling (art. D. 541-245). It already binds a brand that has calculated and communicated a coût environnemental. From 1 October 2026 it broadens: communicate a numeric impact score on a covered garment — a carbon-footprint figure, or a third-party eco-rating you choose to display yourself — and you must display the official coût environnemental alongside it, on the same medium. A purely qualitative claim such as "eco-responsible" or "organic cotton" is not a score. A comparative figure such as "30% fewer emissions than a conventional pair of jeans" sits in a gray zone: the decree does not define "score" and no official guidance settles it, so treat it as exposed until one does.

The second risk is publication by someone else. From the same date anyone at all — a competitor, a journalist, an NGO, an app — may compute and publish a score for your products from available or estimated data, using defaults that penalize you (art. D. 541-244). Your own filed score legally supersedes theirs, and the third party then has up to one month to align.

To display a score publicly, it must first be deposited on the official State portal (art. D. 541-243 V). An internal estimate is not enough to publish.

Where filing lives in PassportCraft

Open a passport and go to the Sustainability & compliance step. The card headed File your official score with the French State appears there, labelled France — affichage environnemental.

It only appears on textile passports. It reaches the filing stages only when the passport lists France in Markets sold into. On a textile passport without France, the card stops at the estimate and shows "Official filing applies when you sell into France." If your role lets you edit the passport, an Add France to your markets button appears with it.

The card walks three states in order: Estimate, Ready to file, Filed.

The editor is not the only place filing happens. The campaign page at passportcraft.com/cout-environnemental is a free scope check and files nothing itself, but signing up from it lands you in a guided France flow that runs the same estimate, attestation, delegation and filing. Both routes file the same declaration.

The estimate is provisional

Click Estimate the score. A dialog titled Estimate the coût environnemental opens, showing what it read from this passport. If net weight or the material composition is missing, the dialog lists what it needs and Estimate score stays disabled — fill those first. Pick the Ecobalyse garment category — it is Required — then click Estimate score, and Done to close.

The figure lands on the card labelled Provisional · not official, as a points value with the methodology version beside it.

Treat this number as internal. The editor says so directly: it is an indicative estimate, it is not a compliance attestation, and communicating it to consumers triggers France's affichage environnemental obligations. Use it to see where a product stands before you commit to a declaration.

If you change the passport after estimating, the card tells you the estimate is stale and asks you to recompute so the filed score matches what you reviewed.

The 11 garment categories

The scheme covers 11 clothing categories: t-shirts and polos, shirts and blouses, jeans, skirts and dresses, coats and jackets, trousers and shorts, sweaters and hoodies, socks, boxers, briefs, and swimwear. Footwear, leather goods, and accessories are out of scope.

If the card cannot work out which category your product is, it shows "Product category not recognized — set it in the Ecobalyse estimate."

What must be complete before you can file

The card lists what is still missing and each entry jumps you to the field. The checks are:

• A valid GTIN, including the check digit.
• Net weight.
• Material composition, summing to 100%, with fibers Ecobalyse recognizes.
• Country of confection, country of weaving or knitting, and country of dyeing or printing. All three are required.
• Every other country you have given must be one the portal supports — that includes the country of spinning and any country you set on an individual fibre in the material composition.

Retail price and number of references behave differently, and this is the one place where "not blocking" is not the same as "fine".

Neither field blocks filing for being missing or too low. The value is simply left out of what we send, and the State's methodology applies its own default instead. The defaults are not neutral. Leave the reference count out and the calculation falls back to the least favourable durability coefficient the method allows. We measured that against the State portal's own test server: one t-shirt scored 780 points with a reference count supplied and 1,127 without it, and that single field accounted for the whole gap. Price feeds the same durability calculation. Fill both fields before you file — the declaration cannot be withdrawn afterwards.

Filing is blocked only at the top end: a price above EUR 1,000 or a reference count above 999,999. The editor does not stop you saving either kind of out-of-range value, and both show up on the Review & publish step, where they block publishing. They differ for filing: a value above the maximum blocks it, a value below the minimum does not — that one is simply left out. A value typed straight in behaves exactly like one that arrived through the API. A CSV import cannot produce one, because the importer holds back any row that fails validation. Note that the card's own message reads "Retail price must be between €1 and €1,000 for the coût environnemental calculation" — it only ever fires above the maximum.

One more rule applies across your organization: two passports cannot file under the same GTIN. One GTIN identifies one product with the French State.

Test passports cannot be filed at all. The declaration goes to the real French State portal, so a test passport is refused and the card reports it as "The portal rejected this declaration."

Delegation happens on your first filing

PassportCraft is registered on the France affichage portal as a Bureau d'études, the account type for an organization that declares on behalf of brands. For us to file for you, your brand delegates declaration rights to us once. You stay the responsible brand.

You can also register your own organization on the portal and declare your own products yourself. Delegating is what lets us do it for you.

You do not have to go looking for this step, but it does not come first either. Click File the official declaration, confirm the attestation described below, and click File now. Only then, if your brand has not delegated yet, does the delegation wizard open. Work through it, then click File the official declaration again and confirm once more.

Only an organization owner or admin can complete the delegation. An editor can reach the wizard, because filing itself allows the editor role, but the verify step will refuse and report only "Something went wrong while verifying. Please try again." If you are an editor, ask an owner or admin to do the delegation once — after that, editors can file normally. A viewer never gets this far. The file button is disabled for them, and the server checks the role before it checks the delegation, so a viewer is refused outright rather than sent to the wizard.

The full walkthrough is in Delegating declaration rights to PassportCraft.

Filing, and what you confirm

Filing is included on Starter, Pro, and Scale. It needs an active paid subscription, so a Pro trial does not carry it — a trial is treated as a non-payer for official external filings. A failed payment does not cut filing off immediately: it keeps working through the grace period described in Upgrading, downgrading, and publish limits.

Separately, a launch offer can cover an organization's first product free. The paid entitlement is checked first and the offer only catches what it refuses, so a paying customer never consumes it — but a Pro trial does, because a trial fails the paid check. The offer runs for a limited number of organizations and can be closed at any time, so the card is what tells you: when the offer is covering your filing, a First filing free badge sits beside the button. A paying customer never sees that badge.

When neither applies there is no file button at all — the card replaces it with the reason. "Filing requires a paid plan." means no paid plan and no offer. "You've used your free filing. Upgrade to Starter to file more products." means the offer covered your first product and this is the second.

When you click File the official declaration, a dialog asks you to confirm this statement:

I confirm that the organization I represent owns this GTIN, or is authorized by its owner to declare this product. I understand that this declaration, and any later update to it for this GTIN, is submitted to the French authorities and cannot be withdrawn.

Read it before you tick it. A filed declaration cannot be withdrawn. You can file again for the same GTIN to update it, but nothing removes it.

What you get back

The State portal recalculates the score and returns it, so the official number can differ from your estimate. When it does, the card says so and tells you the filed score is the authoritative one.

The card then shows:

• The total cost in points, and the standardized cost per 100 g. Both are regulatory values.
• The date you filed.
• The methodology version used.
• The official label, which you can download as SVG or PNG.
• A link to view the declaration on the portal.

The label is supplied by the State portal. It carries both regulatory values and may not be altered or recoloured — the card links to the charte graphique that governs it.

Updating a declaration

Change the product data, then click Update on the filed card. Tick the attestation again and click File now. There is no Recompute button once a passport is filed, and you do not need one: the State recalculates from the passport's current data, not from your earlier estimate.

The card also watches the portal. If the portal's record for a product changes after your filing, it tells you the current portal score and asks you to re-file.