Aug 15, 2026
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Add us on GoogleFrance just made it much more expensive for telemarketers to make unwanted calls to French citizens.
A new rule requires telemarketers to gain express consent from consumers before calling them. If they don’t, individuals could pay fines up to 75,000 euros — around $87,000 — for each unwanted call. Companies could pay up to 375,000 euros — around $435,000 — for each unsolicited call.
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“It cannot be stressed enough that peace and quiet is a right, and it is time to stop exposing consumers to unwanted solicitations,” said advocacy group Que Choisir Ensemble’s president, Marie-Amandine Stévenin, in a statement.
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Spam calls have become a huge problem for France in the past few years. According to a French Parliamentary report, 97% of the population says they are annoyed with daily telemarketing calls. A report from voice security company Hiya found 40% of non-contact calls in France were spam.
France is the latest European country to tackle telemarketers
France used to handle telemarketing calls like the U.S. — it had an opt-out list that people could put their numbers on. Theoretically, call centers would avoid using any numbers on that list, but like the U.S., this list was frequently ignored.
This new rule changes the process to an opt-in list, not an opt-out one. Now, French consumers don’t need to do anything to avoid unwanted spam calls. It’s on the companies to ensure they aren’t making unwanted calls instead.
France isn’t the first country to enact such strict laws around telemarketing. Germany and the Netherlands also put similar limits on companies hoping to solicit new customers.
That opt-in system appears to be working. France had four times as many complaints about unsolicited calls compared to Germany, despite the latter having a higher population. The Netherlands’ switch to opt-in calling is too new to have any strong data on its results.
Time will tell if this new strategy will work out for France. If it does, the U.S. might benefit from switching to an opt-in model, too.
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Unwanted calls are a huge problem for Americans
Scammers are making bank off of robocalls in the U.S. According to the U.S. PIRG Education Fund, an estimated 2.56 billion robocalls were made each month in the first half of 2025; a little more than half of them are from scammers. The people who fell victim to one of these scam calls lost an average of $3,690 during that time period.
The Federal Trade Commission does put rules on how and when telemarketers can contact you. You can choose to put your number on the National Do Not Call Registry; if you do, companies are legally disallowed from calling you unless you give your express consent.
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The Federal Communications Commission also has rules in place to protect consumers from scammers. If a company calls you using a prerecorded or AI-generated call, they have to get your consent first. This rule doesn’t apply to tax-exempt nonprofits; it also doesn’t apply to human telemarketers calling you manually.
If you receive an illegal unwanted call, you can sue the company that called you for up to $1,500 per call. But that doesn’t stop scammers from making illegal robocalls, especially as the number of phone companies that provide legally required robocall prevention software has gone down in recent years.
One problem is that scammers are able to legally switch between phone calls easily, rarely using the same number more than twice. That makes it harder to tell if you’re being re-contacted by a scammer.
To stop this practice, 49 attorneys general recently called for stricter “know-your-customer” rules that would require phone companies to collect data on who they’re selling numbers to, making it harder for scammers to legally switch numbers at will.
This wouldn’t be as strict a law as France’s anti-spam rules, but it would be a first step to protecting Americans from phone scams. With enough rules like this, Americans might even start answering the phone again.
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Kit Pulliam is a DC-based financial journalist with over five years of experience writing, editing and fact-checking financial content.
