If you sell anything with a battery in it to French customers — a cordless drill, an e-bike, wireless headphones, a key finder — you are placing batteries on the French market, and France's battery filière (piles et accumulateurs) treats you as a producer for them. It is a separate registration, a separate declaration and a separate tariff schedule from everything else you already file.
Two facts decide whether your battery declaration is right, and both are routinely gotten wrong. First: you declare the battery's weight, not the product's. Second: in the 2026 barème, the battery's category moves the rate far more than its chemistry does — the same lithium-ion cell can be priced roughly fourteen-fold apart depending on which of five categories it falls into, and one category isn't billed per kilogram at all. This guide walks through both, with every figure quoted verbatim from Batribox's published Barème 2026.
Who counts as the producer
The obligated producer is whoever places batteries on the French market — and that includes batteries inside products. A cordless drill sells a battery; so does a toy with a button cell in the remote, and a laptop, and an e-scooter. For cross-border e-commerce the rule is explicit: a seller shipping battery-containing products from abroad directly to French customers is the producer for those batteries — not the cell manufacturer, and not the French retailer you don't have.
And since 10 July 2026, producers not established in France must appoint a French mandataire — a representative established in France who takes over the REP obligations by written mandate. That obligation is horizontal across filières, batteries included. We covered it in depth in our guide to France's new mandataire requirement; if you ship battery-powered products to France from abroad, read that one too.
The eco-organismes: Batribox, ecosystem, RMV
We verified the eco-organisme mapping against ADEME's public register of REP filières in August 2026. For batteries it lists three: Batribox, ecosystem, and RMV for one category of vehicle batteries (category 5). Two renames matter only as history, but they matter: Batribox is the former Screlec, renamed in January 2025, and Corepile no longer exists — it was absorbed by ecosystem in 2025. If a provider quotes you battery fees from a Corepile barème, they are pricing against an eco-organisme that is no longer there.
One honesty note before the numbers: every tariff in this article comes from Batribox's Barème 2026, which we have transcribed in full — two independent passes over the published PDF, matching cell for cell. ecosystem publishes its own barème, which we have not yet read. A merchant adhered to ecosystem has different rates, and the figures below do not apply to them.
You declare the battery's weight, not the product's
The declarable unit in this filière is not the product. It is the cells and packs inside it: the battery's own mass, times how many of them each product carries, times units sold. A cordless drill weighing 2 kg with a 320 g pack owes on about 0.32 kg — and a merchant who declares the drill's weight instead overpays roughly six-fold, with nothing in the total looking wrong. This is the quiet failure mode of battery declarations: product weights are the number you already have in your systems, and substituting them produces a plausible-looking, badly inflated declaration.
One more consequence of declaring cells rather than products: a product with two different batteries owes one declaration row per chemistry. A device with a lithium pack and an alkaline backup cell owes on both, at different rates — folding them into one row prices one of them wrongly.
Category beats chemistry
The intuitive model of a battery barème — one €/kg rate per chemistry — is wrong, and wrong in a way that costs real money. Batribox publishes five separate barèmes, one per battery category: portable, industrial, SLI (starting/lighting/ignition — the classic car battery), MTL (light means of transport: e-scooters, e-bike packs, electric wheelchairs) and VE (electric-vehicle batteries). The same chemistry lands very differently in each. From the 2026 rows, rechargeable lithium:
- Portable, under 5 kg: €0.544/kg with cobalt (NMC, LCO, NCA), €0.564/kg without cobalt (LFP, LMO, LTO).
- Industrial: €0.348/kg with cobalt, €0.448/kg without.
- SLI: €0.435/kg, one lithium row, no cobalt split.
- VE: €0.048/kg with cobalt and €0.057/kg without at up to 100 kg, falling to €0.038 and €0.047/kg above 1,000 kg.
- MTL: not per kilogram at all — see below.
That is a spread from €0.038 to €0.564 per kilogram for one chemistry — roughly fourteen-fold. A battery filed under the wrong category is not slightly off; it is off by an order of magnitude, and nothing in the total would reveal it. This is why the category is a mandatory input, never an inference: assuming "portable" because most e-commerce batteries are portable would be right most of the time and wrong by fourteen-fold when it was wrong.
MTL is billed per unit, not per kilo
The light-transport category prices € per battery, with the tier chosen by the pack's weight. From the 2026 rows for rechargeable lithium: a pack of 2 to under 5 kg is €2.260 per unit, 9 to under 18 kg is €11.280 per unit, and 18 to 25 kg is €16.120 per unit. Lead-acid and Ni-MH light-transport batteries up to 25 kg are €0.800 per unit. Multiplying an MTL row by kilograms — the reflex the other four categories train into you — produces an error the size of the pack.
A few more 2026 rows worth knowing
- Portable alkaline cells, 0 to 5 kg: €0.442/kg.
- Portable button cells — alkaline, primary lithium, silver oxide and zinc-air rows all at €3.700/kg; rechargeable lithium button cells at €2.500/kg; bio-enzymatic button cells at €0.200/kg. "Button cell" is a shape, not a chemistry — the rows span an 18× range, so a declaration that says only "button cell" cannot be priced.
- Industrial primary lithium (including LiSoCl2): €3.073/kg — the dearest non-button row in the barème.
- Lead batteries, industrial (open or sealed) and SLI (lead-acid, AGM, EFB, Gel) alike: €0.0016/kg.
Two transcription notes, because we believe compliance software should show its work. First, cobalt-free lithium is consistently more expensive than lithium with cobalt — 0.564 > 0.544 portable, 0.448 > 0.348 industrial, 0.057 > 0.048 VE. It looks like a slip; it is consistent across all three categories that draw the distinction, so we transcribe it as the barème. Second, the VE tiers "up to 100 kg" and "100 to 1,000 kg" carry identical figures — Batribox publishes them as two rows, and so do we. Merging them would be our edit, not theirs.
The simplified rate, the floor, and second life
Small sellers of portable batteries get a simplified option: €0.30 per unit, available only when both conditions hold — fewer than 10,000 units a year and every cell under 1 kg. Eligibility is a property of your whole declaration, not of one product. Separately, Batribox applies a minimum annual contribution of €200 HT per battery category — a floor over the year, not a per-line charge. And the 2026 barème carries a second-life eco-modulation: a premium of 100% of the applicable rate (outside penalties) for batteries that have gone through preparation for re-use, repurposing or remanufacturing, by reference to Regulation (EU) 2023/1542.
The three states of a battery catalogue
Battery scope is not a category list, because the declarable item is not the product. In practice a catalogue splits into three states, and keeping them apart is what keeps the declaration honest:
- Declared. The product has battery rows on file — chemistry, category, unit weight, quantity — one row per chemistry. These can be priced.
- Affirmed but not declared. You have already stated a battery exists — either the product is a battery, or you assigned it an EEE code that Ecologic modulates on the battery criterion (42 of the 314 codes in the 2026 EEE barème). Both are your own statements, not anyone's inference. A missing battery row here is a data gap to close, not a guess to make.
- Suspected. The product name says "cordless" and nothing else confirms it. That is a question, reported apart — never a priced line, because inventing a chemistry would invent a tariff.
Batteries stack on top of EEE — and packaging on top of both
The cordless drill is the canonical case: one EEE declaration and one battery declaration, on two different masses. That is not double-counting — the French filières are designed that way, and Ecologic's own EEE barème says so by modulating 42 of its codes on whether a battery is present. We cover the electronics side in our deep dive on France's EEE filière. And the box, the blister and the mailer are a third declaration again: household packaging is its own filière with its own tariffs. A foreign seller of cordless products typically holds three French registrations — EEE, batteries, packaging. Our guide to France's EPR filières maps the whole landscape.
IDU numbers and marketplace verification
Each filière registration yields an IDU (identifiant unique) via ADEME's SYDEREP system — one per filière, so a battery IDU is a separate number from your EEE and packaging ones. Administrative penalties reach €30,000 per missing IDU, per filière, but the faster enforcement is commercial: French law makes marketplaces co-responsible for verifying that third-party sellers hold valid IDUs for the relevant filières, and a platform that would otherwise become the producer itself responds by blocking listings. If you sell battery-powered products, expect to be asked for a battery-filière IDU, not just a packaging one.
What to prepare, per SKU
- Does it contain a battery? Sold as one, shipped inside, or shipped alongside — all count.
- Chemistry, per battery — precise enough to pick a row. For portable and industrial lithium that includes the cobalt question; for a button cell, which kind of button cell.
- Category — portable, industrial, SLI, MTL or VE. This is the axis that sets the order of magnitude, and it cannot be inferred from a product feed.
- Unit weight of the cell or pack — the battery's mass, not the product's — and how many per product.
- Register with your eco-organisme, get your IDU — and if you are not established in France, appoint your mandataire first.
How Pack Declare helps
Pack Declare has seeded all 42 published rows of Batribox's 2026 barème, transcribed verbatim from the official PDF in two independent passes and stored as exact figures — never floats, never interpolations. Describe each SKU's batteries once (chemistry, category, unit weight, count), and we compute the declared mass from your real French sales in Shopify, WooCommerce or Amazon data — battery weight × cells per product × units sold — pricing MTL packs per unit and everything else per kilogram, one row per chemistry. We are honest about the boundaries: a battery with no stated category is reported, not guessed at; products you have affirmed as battery-bearing but not described show up as gaps; "cordless" names show up as questions; and the €200-per-category floor is reported alongside the estimate rather than silently multiplied in. The chemistry, category and battery weight are inputs no sales export contains — we ask for them instead of pretending we can infer them.
Check your French battery & EEE obligations free →
Already using Pack Declare? The estimate for your own catalogue is in the app.
Frequently asked questions
Which eco-organismes handle battery EPR in France?
ADEME’s public register lists three: Batribox, ecosystem, and RMV for one category of vehicle batteries (category 5). Batribox is the former Screlec, renamed in January 2025, and Corepile was absorbed by ecosystem in 2025 — a Corepile barème is priced against an eco-organisme that no longer exists.
Do I declare the product’s weight or the battery’s weight?
The battery’s. The declarable unit is the cell or pack, not the product around it: its own mass, times batteries per product, times units sold. A 2 kg cordless drill with a 320 g pack owes on about 0.32 kg — declaring the drill’s weight would overpay roughly six-fold with nothing in the total looking wrong.
Why does the battery category matter more than its chemistry?
Because Batribox publishes five separate barèmes — portable, industrial, SLI, light transport (MTL) and electric vehicle (VE) — and the same chemistry is priced very differently in each. In 2026, rechargeable lithium runs from €0.038/kg (VE, over 1,000 kg, with cobalt) to €0.564/kg (portable, cobalt-free): roughly fourteen-fold. A battery in the wrong category is off by an order of magnitude.
Are e-bike and e-scooter batteries priced per kilogram?
No. The MTL category (light means of transport) bills per battery unit, with the tier chosen by the pack’s weight: in 2026 a rechargeable lithium pack of 2 to under 5 kg is €2.260 per unit, 9 to under 18 kg is €11.280, and 18 to 25 kg is €16.120. Multiplying an MTL row by kilograms is an error the size of the pack.
What does a product with two different batteries declare?
One row per chemistry. A device with a lithium pack and an alkaline backup cell owes on both, at different rates. Folding them into a single row prices one of them wrongly.
Is there a simplified rate for small battery sellers?
Yes, for portable batteries only: €0.30 per unit in the 2026 Batribox barème, available when both conditions hold — fewer than 10,000 units a year and every cell under 1 kg. Eligibility is a property of the whole declaration, not of a single product. Batribox also applies a minimum annual contribution of €200 HT per battery category.
Is the battery declaration separate from WEEE (EEE)?
Yes, and both apply to the same product by design. A cordless drill is one EEE declaration and one battery declaration, on two different masses — Ecologic’s 2026 EEE barème even modulates 42 of its 314 codes on whether a battery is present. Packaging is a third declaration on top.
Do foreign sellers need a mandataire for the battery filière?
Yes, if not established in France. Since 10 July 2026 the mandataire obligation is horizontal across French filières, batteries included. A seller shipping battery-containing products from abroad to French customers is the producer and must appoint a representative established in France by written mandate.
Related reading: France's new mandataire rule for foreign sellers · The complete guide to France's EPR filières · France's EEE filière for electronics sellers