Justice. Late Payments: Fnac and Darty Fined Heavy, They Are Contesting

Fnac Darty was fined €3.9 million earlier this week by the French anti-fraud agency for "delays in paying its suppliers' invoices." The group announced on Wednesday that it will "contest" these decisions "before the competent courts."

In detail, it is both "Fnac Darty participations et services" and "Darty & Fils" which were sanctioned by the General Directorate for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF), each for the same reason and a similar amount of 1.95 million euros.

The group cites Covid-19

Fnac Darty claims that the controls that led to the sanctions date back to the time of the Covid-19 pandemic: "an exceptional context that does not seem to have been fully taken into account," the group laments in a response sent to AFP, recalling the "significant disorganization" that marked this period.

The group also questions the amount of fines imposed by the DGCCRF, citing several examples of reduced sanctions before administrative courts after taking into account the context and disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

A recurring problem, late inter-company payments are punishable by an administrative fine of up to €2 million. In 2024, these delays deteriorated "significantly in France" and returned "above the European average," the Banque de France reported in early July, with an average delay of 13.6 days last year.

Bayrou raises his voice

"Only 50% of large companies currently pay without delay. In the absence of these delays, SMEs would have benefited from 15 billion euros of additional cash flow in 2024," stated the Banque de France .

Faced with what sometimes constitute significant "holes" in the cash flow of certain SMEs, the current maximum amount of the fine is deemed insufficiently dissuasive by the executive.

In mid-July, Prime Minister François Bayrou announced that he wanted to toughen sanctions by imposing a financial penalty of up to 1% of turnover on companies that are late in paying their trading partners, in order to put an end to practices that are weakening our economic fabric. According to him, this is one of the fundamental problems facing businesses, particularly SMEs.

The Business and Credit Ombudsmen had also spoken out earlier in the year in favour of such a measure.