# France

> France (AMF · ACPR · CNIL): Hardest against anonymity, most literate about privacy tech. Region: Europe. Confidential with disclosure: Confidentiality is workable so long as the regulated firm can identify the parties and disclose on demand. Encrypted amounts are not the thing being restricted.

Part of the Soda Labs Privacy Hub regulation map, which reads the instruments
themselves rather than summarising the summaries: https://www.sodalabs.xyz/privacy-hub/regulation

## Key facts

- Entry type: Jurisdiction
- Region: Europe
- Subject: Hardest against anonymity, most literate about privacy tech
- Authority: AMF · ACPR · CNIL
- Stance on on-chain confidentiality: Confidential with disclosure. Confidentiality is workable so long as the regulated firm can identify the parties and disclose on demand. Encrypted amounts are not the thing being restricted.
- Tags: anonymous account ban, no de minimis, CNIL doctrine, commitments over hashing
- Canonical page: https://www.sodalabs.xyz/privacy-hub/regulation/jur-france

## What it actually says

France pulls harder in both directions than any other member state. On one side it legislated against transactional anonymity earlier and more explicitly than the EU baseline required: providers may not hold anonymous accounts, identification is required before any occasional transaction with no minimum value, and anonymous electronic money cannot be used to buy digital assets. On the other, its data protection regulator produced the most technically literate guidance any European authority has published on building compliant chains. The 2018 analysis ranks cryptographic techniques in order of preference and states that a perfectly hiding commitment, once its witness is destroyed, ceases to be personal data at all. That is a regulator describing how to do this properly rather than warning people off.

## The instruments that matter

- **Ordonnance 2020-1544 of 9 December 2020**: its Article 4 prohibits digital asset service providers from holding anonymous accounts, placing them among the entities barred from doing so under the monetary and financial code
- **Décret 2021-387 of 2 April 2021**: imposes identification before any occasional transaction, removing the de minimis threshold entirely, and provides that anonymous electronic money may not be used to buy digital assets
- **CNIL blockchain analysis, September 2018**: sets a ranked preference for recording personal data, favouring a cryptographic commitment, then a keyed hash, then at minimum ciphertext, with plain hashing or clear text only exceptionally
- **A national regulator on anonymisation**: the CNIL states that where a commitment is perfectly hiding, deleting the witness and the committed value anonymises it such that it loses its character as personal data
- **CNIL on the digital euro, 13 May 2026**: firmly supports the offline mode guaranteeing anonymity, argues for an online threshold below which intermediaries should not trace transactions, and prefers dynamic identifiers over static ones

## Sources

- [Décret 2021-387 on combating anonymity of virtual assets](https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jorf/id/JORFTEXT000043328577)
- [CNIL analysis of blockchain](https://www.cnil.fr/sites/default/files/2025-08/la_blockchain_chaine_blocs.pdf)

## Related entries

- [Austria](https://www.sodalabs.xyz/privacy-hub/regulation/jur-austria): EU baseline, with an early transition close
- [Belgium](https://www.sodalabs.xyz/privacy-hub/regulation/jur-belgium): EU baseline, with no national layer on confidentiality
- [Czechia](https://www.sodalabs.xyz/privacy-hub/regulation/jur-czechia): EU baseline, supervised by the central bank
- [Denmark](https://www.sodalabs.xyz/privacy-hub/regulation/jur-denmark): EU baseline, with tax as the historic pressure point
- [Estonia](https://www.sodalabs.xyz/privacy-hub/regulation/jur-estonia): The licence cull that reshaped the European market
- [Germany](https://www.sodalabs.xyz/privacy-hub/regulation/jur-germany): A national custody licence, and secrecy for tokenised securities