France's CBD Crackdown Heads to Court — and the Whole EU Is Watching

A legal battle quietly unfolding in Paris this autumn may carry more weight for Europe's CBD sector than any single national ruling in recent memory. France's highest administrative court, the Conseil d'État (Council of State), is preparing to issue a final judgment on whether the French government acted lawfully when it ordered the removal of CBD food products from retail shelves — with little warning and no transitional arrangements for an industry that had spent years building its business under official tolerance.

The Ban That Caught an Industry Off Guard

On 15 May 2025, France's DGAL (Directorate General for Food) issued a national control plan ordering the withdrawal of CBD-infused food products — including sublingual oils, capsules, herbal infusions, confectionery, and beverages — from all French retailers. The order followed a risk assessment by ANSES (the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety) and came at the direction of MASA (the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Sovereignty), which had raised safety concerns about edible CBD products earlier in the year.

What made the order particularly jarring for industry players was not the regulatory concern itself, but the manner in which it arrived. For several years prior, French CBD businesses had operated under a framework of administrative tolerance broadly comparable to the UK's approach: products were permitted on the market below certain CBD concentration thresholds, provided companies met ongoing conditions around labelling, packaging, and safety standards.

Paul Maclean, President of UPCBD (the Union of CBD Professionals), one of the trade associations leading the legal challenge, described the shift as abrupt and without precedent. Speaking to Business of Cannabis, he recalled that as recently as early 2025, discussions with government officials had focused on refinements — tighter packaging rules to prevent confusion with confectionery aimed at children — rather than any suggestion that the entire tolerance framework was under review. Then, he said, the position changed overnight.

A Question of Administrative Law, Not Just Science

Two trade associations — UPCBD and UIVEC (the Union of Industries for the Promotion of Hemp Extracts) — filed an urgent appeal at the Council of State seeking first an emergency suspension of the order, and then its definitive cancellation. In July, the court declined to issue an emergency injunction, finding that the control plan was primarily concerned with permitting procedures rather than immediate stock seizures. However, the presiding judge indicated that a final decision could be expected within months, and the substantive hearing is now approaching.

Zoé Demange, co-founder and General Manager of UIVEC, was precise about what the court will actually be asked to decide. The case, she stressed, is not principally about whether CBD is safe — that scientific question is still being worked through at EU level via the EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) Novel Food process. The legal question before the court is narrower and, in some respects, more fundamental: whether a government authority can lawfully reverse its own published regulatory doctrine without notice and without any transitional period for businesses that invested on the basis of that framework.

“For several years operators developed products, obtained declaration certificates and invested on the basis of the framework the administration itself had set out. The plan then withdrew all of it from the market, with no transitional arrangements and no notice. That is what the Conseil d'État will have to assess: not the science, but whether such a reversal can lawfully be imposed on an entire sector in that way.” — Zoé Demange, UIVEC

This is not the first time the Council of State has weighed in on CBD. In 2022, the court rejected an attempt by French authorities to ban the sale of CBD flower in shops, grounding its decision in the landmark Kanavape ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union, which established that CBD derived from the whole hemp plant does not meet the definition of a narcotic substance and therefore cannot be treated as one under EU law. The trade groups are now hoping for a similarly favourable precedent on food products.

Why This Matters Beyond French Borders

The outcome of this case will be closely observed by CBD operators, regulators, and policy advocates across the European Union — including in Malta. The central tension the French case exposes is one facing the entire bloc: CBD food products have been in legal limbo since EFSA classified them as Novel Foods in 2019, a designation that technically requires pre-market safety authorisation. In the years since, member states have adopted wildly inconsistent approaches, ranging from full prohibition to active tolerance. France, until now, had belonged to the tolerant camp.

In Malta, ARUC (Authority on the Responsible Use of Cannabis), the authority responsible for regulating adult-use cannabis under Malta's 2021 cannabis reform (Chapter 628 of the Laws of Malta), oversees a framework focused on adult-use cannabis through licensed Cannabis Harm Reduction Associations (CHRAs). CBD products occupy a legally distinct space in Malta, as they do across the EU, with their status governed by European-level Novel Food rules rather than the CHRA framework. How the French court rules on the legality of an abrupt regulatory reversal could inform how consumer-facing CBD businesses across Europe — including locally operating retailers — anticipate and respond to similar shifts.

Enforcement in France has so far been selective. According to Maclean, it has been primarily retailers who publicly complained about the ban that have attracted the attention of inspectors — a pattern that suggests the authorities are not yet mounting a systematic sweep of the market ahead of the court ruling.

The Autumn Hearing and What Comes Next

Both trade associations say they are approaching the autumn hearing with confidence. Maclean was direct: “If we didn't believe we would win the court case, we would not have filed it.” Demange echoed this, noting that the substantive legal arguments around the legality of the regulatory reversal have not yet been examined by the court — a point she views as grounds for optimism.

Whatever the Council of State decides, its reasoning will matter as much as its conclusion. A ruling that sets clear conditions on how member state authorities may or may not withdraw tolerance frameworks — and what procedural protections industries are owed when they do — would give businesses, legal advisers, and regulators across the EU a clearer map for navigating the years it may still take EFSA to complete its Novel Food review of CBD.

Europe's CBD sector has long operated in a patchwork of national rules stitched together beneath an unresolved EU-level question. The French ruling will not resolve that underlying tension, but it may at least establish that regulatory certainty, once extended, cannot simply be revoked without consequence.

Sources:
Business of Cannabis — https://businessofcannabis.com/french-trade-groups-prepare-for-key-cbd-ruling/

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