Packaging industry spent at least €2.5 million lobbying France in 2025

Lobbying around a €22 billion market

Packaging manufacturers and related industries spent at least €2.5 million on lobbying in France during 2025, according to a Zero Waste France report detailed by Le Monde. The campaign sought to influence policies affecting a packaging market with annual revenue estimated at about €22 billion, particularly measures aimed at reducing single-use plastic.

Zero Waste France based its estimate on declarations filed with France’s High Authority for Transparency in Public Life, known as HATVP. The organization identified 125 entities whose declared influence activities concerned packaging. Of these, 34 devoted more than half of their lobbying budgets to the issue. The €2.5 million estimate covers those declarations and is presented as a minimum because it excludes European-level lobbying, commissioned studies and communications campaigns outside the HATVP’s scope.

The interests involved extend beyond packaging manufacturers. Zero Waste France’s mapping includes plastics companies, food multinationals, major retailers, bottled-water producers and organizations responsible for packaging-waste management. The plastics groups Elipso, Plastalliance and Polyvia occupy central positions. Packaging generated 42% of the French plastics industry’s revenue in 2025, when the sector’s total sales exceeded €39 billion.

Plastic tax removed from the 2026 budget

Elipso, which represents rigid and flexible plastic packaging manufacturers, declared 34 influence activities for 2025, down from 42 in 2024, and a lobbying budget of €200,000. It employed eight public-affairs staff. Its 2025 annual report said sustained advocacy led lawmakers to submit amendments seeking the removal of a proposed plastic tax at every key stage of the parliamentary process.

The measure had been included in France’s 2026 budget bill and was expected to raise €29 million for the state in 2026. It would have shifted part of France’s roughly €1.5 billion payment to the European Union under the plastic levy onto the industry. The Senate removed the proposal in December 2025 through amendments submitted by lawmakers from Les Républicains and Horizons. Elipso reported holding more than 17 strategic meetings with ministerial offices, the central administration and parliamentarians.

Le Monde also reported that one organization filed no lobbying budget for 2025 despite declaring 28 activities, after reporting more than €400,000 in 2024. In January, it financed the “Too much?” supermarket communications campaign promoting plastic packaging. Recycling group Paprec declared more than €1 million in influence spending. Under a judicial agreement concluded in 2025, Paprec paid a €17.5 million fine to avoid prosecution over corruption, collusion and favoritism allegations related to public waste contracts.

France remains behind packaging targets

France’s 2020 anti-waste law set a goal of eliminating single-use plastic packaging by 2040. Six years later, more than 110 billion items of single-use household packaging are still placed on the market annually. Plastic bottle volumes remain at 14.6 billion, despite a target to halve them by 2030.

France recycles only one quarter of its plastic packaging, according to Le Monde, compared with a European target of 50% and an average of 42% among other countries. The gap leaves taxpayers covering the country’s approximately €1.5 billion EU plastic-levy payment.

Other declared participants included the soft-drinks association with €175,000, the national food-industry association with nearly €65,000 and packaging compliance organization Citeo with €240,000. Two environmental organizations that devoted more than half of their lobbying budgets to packaging spent a combined €43,000 in 2025, nearly 60 times less than the €2.5 million attributed to industry. Zero Waste France is calling for waste prevention and reuse to become priorities in the government’s forthcoming reduction, reuse and recycling strategy.