“In France, every driver must carry an unused breathalyser kit in the car or face a fine”
France did make every driver carry an unused breathalyser from 1 July 2012, but the promised fine was postponed twice and deleted on the morning it was due to start, and the obligation itself was repealed on 22 May 2020. No French driver has to carry one today.
A décret, a kit, and an 11 euro fine
On 28 February 2012 the French government issued décret 2012-284, adding a new article R. 234-7 to the Code de la route. From 1 July 2012 every driver of a motor vehicle, mopeds excepted, had to be able to show an unused, in-date breathalyser on demand. The same décret listed the kit among the items a driver must present at a roadside check under article R. 233-1, where failing to produce a required item is a first-class contravention, the lowest tier of French traffic fine, with a fixed penalty of 11 euros. The fine was not to bite until 1 November 2012, to give drivers time to buy kits.
The fine that never arrived
Supply problems and a lobbying scandal got in the way. Senator Claire-Lise Campion asked the interior minister in September 2012 about a near-monopoly on certified kits, a market she put at more than 76 million euros, and about the head of the I-Tests association that had pushed for the rule. Décret 2012-1197 of 29 October 2012 pushed the start of the penalty back to 1 March 2013. Then décret 2013-180 of 28 February 2013, taking effect the very day the fine was due, rewrote R. 233-1 so that the breathalyser was carved out of the penalty clause. The ministry's answer to the Senate explained that fining people for not owning a kit discouraged the voluntary self-testing the rule was meant to encourage. The obligation stayed on the books, unenforceable, for seven more years.
Quietly repealed in 2020
The 2019 mobility law (loi d'orientation des mobilités) gave the government cover to tidy up, and décret 2020-605 of 18 May 2020 did it. Article 8 struck the breathalyser from the list of documents in R. 233-1, and article 9 replaced R. 234-7 entirely with a rule fining late-night bars that fail to offer breathalysers to customers. The current text of R. 234-7 on Légifrance, in force since 22 May 2020, says nothing about drivers carrying a kit. Only drivers under a court-ordered ignition-interlock (éthylotest antidémarrage) have any breathalyser obligation now.
Where the story gets it wrong
Police can fine you 11 euros if they find no breathalyser in your car in France. Nobody was ever fined under this rule: the penalty was deferred from 1 November 2012 to 1 March 2013 and then deleted by décret 2013-180 on the day it was due to start, and the underlying obligation was repealed on 22 May 2020.
Parliament passed a breathalyser law in 2012. The obligation was created by government décret 2012-284, which inserted article R. 234-7 into the regulatory part of the Code de la route, and it was undone the same way by décret 2020-605; no Act of Parliament ever required the kits.
Tourists driving into France still have to buy a kit at the border. The requirement, while it lasted, applied to anyone driving a motor vehicle on French roads, but it ended in May 2020, so a kit is now merely advice, not law.
Tout conducteur d'un véhicule terrestre à moteur, à l'exclusion d'un cyclomoteur, doit justifier de la possession d'un éthylotest, non usagé, disponible immédiatement.
- Current status
- Repealed
- Enacted
- February 28, 2012
- Repealed
- May 22, 2020
- Penalty
- None ever applied. The 2012 décret made failure to produce a breathalyser a first-class contravention, a fixed fine of 11 euros, from 1 November 2012; that date was pushed to 1 March 2013 and the penalty was removed by décret 2013-180 before it took effect. The obligation itself ended on 22 May 2020.
- Jurisdiction
- Applied nationwide to drivers of motor vehicles other than mopeds, 1 July 2012 to 22 May 2020.