Website legal notice: what you must publish in France, the EU and the UK

A website legal notice is the page, or the block in your footer, that says who runs the site and how to reach them. The website legal notice requirements are close in the EU and the UK, because both start from the same EU directive of 2000. France asks for the most: a phone number, the share capital, a named publication director and the details of the company that hosts the site, on a page called the mentions légales.

This guide lists what to publish in each country, for a company and for a sole trader, with a template at the end. I build websites for small teams in France and the UK, and the legal pages are part of every site I deliver. This article is part of my GDPR guide for small teams.

The rules here are those in force on 19 October 2026, given as general information, not legal advice.

What a website legal notice is, and what it is not

A legal notice answers one question: who is behind this website? It names the business, says where it is established and gives a way to contact it.

It is not the only legal page in your footer:

Two other guides cover what a privacy policy must say and cookie banner requirements.

The EU baseline: Article 5 of the E-Commerce Directive

Every EU country applies the same minimum, set by Article 5 of Directive 2000/31/EC on electronic commerce. A business website must make the following “easily, directly and permanently accessible”:

• your name: the legal name of the business, not only a brand;
• the geographic address where you are established;
• contact details, including an email address, for quick and direct contact;
• your trade register and registration number;
• the supervisory authority, if your activity needs an authorisation;
• for a regulated profession (architect, accountant, lawyer…): your professional body, your title and the country that granted it, and the professional rules that apply;
• your VAT number, if your activity is subject to VAT.

Article 5 also requires prices, where you show them, to say clearly whether they include tax and delivery costs. The Digital Services Act replaced other parts of the directive, not Article 5.

Each country writes this list into its own law, and an EU business follows the rules of the country where it is established (Article 3). That is why a German site has an Impressum and a French one has mentions légales: the names differ, the core is the same.

Website legal notice requirements in France: the mentions légales

The French list applies to every professional website, whatever the size of the business. It comes from the loi pour la confiance dans l’économie numérique of 21 June 2004 (LCEN). The core list now sits in its article 1-1, where the SREN law of 21 May 2024 moved it from the former article 6, III. The LCEN also transposes Article 5, which adds the email address, the VAT number and the regulated-profession details.

Regulated professions add the details listed above: an architect, for example, names the regional council of the Ordre des architectes.

The penalty is criminal: up to one year in prison and a €75,000 fine for an individual or a company’s manager, and up to €375,000 for a company. Convictions are rare, and the everyday cost is quieter. I want the sites I build to make a business look serious enough to be taken at its price, and a missing or half-empty legal notice works against that with any client who checks.

If you sell to consumers: terms of sale and a mediator

A site that sells to consumers adds terms of sale (conditions générales de vente, or CGV) and a consumer mediator. Since 1 January 2016, every professional must let consumers use a mediator free of charge (article L612-1 of the Code de la consommation) and show the mediator’s contact details and website visibly, for example on its site and in its terms (articles L616-1 and R616-1). Leaving them out can cost an administrative fine of up to €3,000 for an individual and €15,000 for a company (article L641-1). Sites that only sell to businesses are not concerned.

What a UK website must display

UK law has no page called a legal notice, but the information is compulsory, and it comes from two places.

1. The Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002, still in force after Brexit. Regulation 6 follows Article 5 of the directive: name, geographic address, email address, register and number, VAT number if you are VAT-registered, and the authority and profession details where they apply. It covers sole traders and partnerships as well as companies.
2. The trading disclosure rules for companies, in the Company, Limited Liability Partnership and Business (Names and Trading Disclosures) Regulations 2015. A limited company’s website must show its registered name, company number, registered office address and the part of the UK where it is registered, as GOV.UK sums up.

Many UK companies cover both with a few lines at the bottom of every page:

[Company name] Ltd · Registered in England and Wales · Company number [number]
Registered office: [full address] · VAT number: GB[9 digits]
Contact: [email address]

A sole trader has no company number to show, but the 2002 Regulations ask for the name of the person behind the business: put your own name next to your trading name, with a geographic address and an email address.

Missing company disclosures are an offence committed by the company and every officer in default, punishable by a fine of up to £1,000. Under section 83 of the Companies Act 2006, a court can also dismiss the company’s claim on a contract made during the breach, if the other side shows the missing details cost it money or blocked its own claim.

Selling into France or the EU from outside it

These rules apply to businesses established in each country. Sell from London, Geneva, Montreal or New York to customers in France, and two more sets of rules reach you.

• Consumer law. When you direct your sales at consumers in an EU country, their country’s consumer protections generally apply to the contract (Article 6 of the Rome I Regulation), including the duty to give your identity, geographic address, phone number and email address before they order. The UK’s Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 set a similar list for EU businesses selling to UK consumers.
• The GDPR. If you target people in the EU, your privacy policy must say who you are, and you may need a representative there: see whether the GDPR applies outside the EU.

The simplest answer is one legal page built on the longest list, the French one, plus the UK lines if your company is registered in the UK.

Where to put it, and the mistakes to avoid

Link it from the footer of every page with a plain label, “Legal notice” (“Mentions légales” on a French site): one click from any page is the usual way to make it easily, directly and permanently accessible. Write it as text, not as an image: French law asks for an “open standard”, and text is what visitors, screen readers, search engines and AI assistants can read.

Three mistakes to check for:

• Naming the registrar as the host. The host is the company whose servers store the site, such as Squarespace, Wix, Shopify, OVHcloud or o2switch. The registrar is where you bought the domain name, often a different company: my guide to domains and hosting explains the difference.
• Not updating it after a move. Many of my clients have moved from WordPress to Squarespace, and each move changes the host. A new registered office or a capital increase changes the company lines.
• A copied template with someone else’s details still in it, or placeholders such as [VAT number] left in place.

Your legal notice in five steps, with a template

1. Get your official record: the Companies House entry for a UK company, a Kbis or RNE extract in France, and your VAT number.
2. Find your host’s legal name, address and phone number in its legal pages.
3. Fill in the template below and delete the lines that do not apply.
4. Publish it as a page linked from the footer of every page, next to your privacy policy and cookie settings.
5. Check it once a year, and after any move, platform change or company change.

Legal notice

This website is published by [legal name and legal form].
UK company: registered in [England and Wales], company number [number]
French company: share capital [amount] · RCS [town] [SIREN number]
Registered office: [full address]
Phone: [number] · Email: [address]
VAT number: [number, if you have one]
Publication director (France): [name, role]
Host (France): [host's legal name, address, phone number]
Regulated profession: [professional body, title, country, rules]
Consumer mediator (France, sales to consumers): [name, website]

You do not need a lawyer for the legal notice itself: it is a list of facts you already have. One earns their fee on the documents around it: terms of sale for an online shop, a marketplace where other people sell, a regulated profession, or a site that publishes content from its users.

On the sites I build, the legal notice, the privacy policy and the cookie banner are part of the website project. Put the legal pages in your brief when you ask for quotes, as my website budget checklist suggests, and use my complete guide to business websites for the rest of the launch checks.