France

France acted against retail leveraged trading earlier and more aggressively than any other large EU market. The Autorité des marchés financiers supervises brokers alongside the ACPR, and its approach has been to attack marketing rather than only products.

The advertising ban

The Loi Sapin II of 2016 prohibited electronic advertising of the riskiest leveraged retail products to French residents — binary options, and contracts with unlimited or very high leverage. This came two years before ESMA's intervention and was aimed at a specific problem the AMF had documented: studies of French retail accounts showed the overwhelming majority losing money, with losses rising alongside marketing spend. The measure removed the acquisition channel rather than waiting to police the products.

The blacklist

The AMF publishes and continuously updates a list of unauthorised websites soliciting French investors, and works with the courts to have them blocked. It is a genuinely useful resource: checking a broker's domain against it takes a minute and catches the clone sites that ordinary register searches miss.

Trading conditions

The ESMA caps apply — 30:1 on major pairs down to 2:1 on cryptocurrencies — with negative balance protection, 50% margin close-out and no bonuses. Binary options are banned outright for retail clients. Many brokers serving France are licensed elsewhere in the EEA and passport in under MiFID II, which is lawful; the compensation scheme then follows the licence rather than the client's residence.

Compensation and tax

For firms covered by the French scheme, the Fonds de Garantie des Dépôts et de Résolution protects securities positions up to €70,000 per client, separately from its deposit guarantee. On tax, capital gains from trading are generally subject to the prélèvement forfaitaire unique — the flat tax combining income tax and social contributions — with an option to elect the progressive scale where that is more favourable. A French broker reports; a foreign one does not, and undeclared foreign accounts carry their own penalties.

Before opening an account

Search the firm on the REGAFI register of authorised financial institutions, check the domain against the AMF blacklist, and confirm which entity and which regulator your account agreement actually names.