Historically in France, terminating an insurance, telephone, electricity, or other service contract has often been a complicated process.

As a general rule, such contracts are automatically renewed and terminating them has involved sending a recorded delivery letter to an address that is frequently buried in the documentation or website, and to do so within a specific period prior to the renewal date.

Things have improved in recent years, notably for insurance contracts, as insurers are now required to give you due notice of the expiry date at least 15 days prior to the renewal notice period.

It is also possible to terminate most insurance policies at any time after expiry of the first year of the contract.

Nevertheless, many service companies have continued to insist on a (relatively expensive) recorded delivery letter being used.

With the passage of a new law through the French parliament all that has now ended for since 1st June it has been possible to terminate most service contracts on-line.

The government have termed the new process résiliation en trois clics.

Under the law, all companies that offer a customer the ability to sign up on-line are required to ensure that they provide “an identifiable, easy to access, direct and permanent functionality" to terminate the contract.

The process must be free of charge, but you are not obliged to use it, as you can still terminate the contract by letter.

In most cases, a "resilier votre contrat" button will be present on the web page of the supplier. You need to simply click on it, and a second page should open for you to fill in the relevant information, after which you will need to click again to confirm the termination.

Nevertheless, as might be expected many insurers have yet to update their websites for the new changes (despite having been notified of the requirement in August 2022), so if you are expecting to be able to do it immediately you may be disappointed. In which case, simply send them a termination email asking for confirmation of reply. Companies have until 1st September to get their act together.

Those that do not comply with the obligation can be fined up to €75,000.

The new procedure applies to both future contracts and those already signed.

It does not, however, change existing rules about the notice period required to terminate the contract within the first year, although, as we have said, renewable contracts at least a year old can be terminated at any time.

Similarly, if you have signed up to a contract for a fixed period, such as is often the case with mobile telephone contracts, you remain tied to the duration of that contract.