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Restaurant closures for hygiene violations in France: where can you find the official list?

Alim'confiance, France's public database of food safety inspection results, publishes inspection findings rather than a list of closures.

By Valentin Morterol Co-founder of Scalon
The short answer

According to France's Ministry of Agriculture, the official list is Alim'confiance, the government's food safety inspection database: search by restaurant name or address to see its latest rating, displayed for one year, rather than a list of current closures. On September 25, 2026, 322 of the 333 most severe ratings were associated with a closure or a halt in operations (Scalon).

Get the list of businesses under a closure order, with the contact details available.

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Published on October 23, 2026

Key figures
322 of 333
Most severe ratings followed by a closure
Or a halt in operations, across all food businesses, Scalon snapshot taken September 25, 2026
1 year
How long a rating stays online
A rating does not say whether the restaurant is still closed today
nearly 2%
Inspections followed by a closure
Share of inspections that led to a closure in the Val-de-Marne in 2025: a local figure, not France as a whole

In this article

Administrative closure: where to find the official list?#

The official list is called Alim'confiance. It publishes the results of the Ministry of Agriculture's health inspections, not a list of closures. Its most severe rating covers administrative closures as well as withdrawals and suspensions of approval. According to Service-public, food safety approval is required for a business that sells food of animal origin to other businesses.

To look up a restaurant, open the Alim'confiance site: you can search by business name, type of activity or address, according to Service-public. Each listing gives the date of the last inspection and the hygiene level, online for one year.

So a rating still online does not tell you whether the restaurant is closed today. Before dropping it from your prospect list, check whether it has reopened, for example by contacting it.

For example, you find a "needing urgent correction" rating from several months ago. Mark this restaurant "to check" in your list, call it to find out whether it has resumed business, then update its record.

Alim'confiance rates each inspected business on four hygiene levels:

  • very satisfactory hygiene level;
  • satisfactory hygiene level;
  • hygiene level needing improvement;
  • hygiene level needing urgent correction.

The last level covers violations "that could endanger consumer health." A business rated this way has therefore not necessarily been subject to an administrative closure. The list says that a food hygiene problem was judged serious, not which penalty followed.

In practice, closures dominate: of the 333 "needing urgent correction" ratings displayed on September 25, 2026, 322 were associated with a closure or a halt in operations, across all food businesses rather than just restaurants, according to the Scalon Observatory count.

Selling to businesses under a closure order? Get the list for your area and your target, ready to call.

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Administrative closure and its duration: until reopening#

Article L233-1 of the Rural Code does not specify a fixed number of days for the closure. The closure lasts until the measures needed to reopen without risking public health have been carried out.

In practice, the operator carries out the compliance work, then a reopening inspection checks the result.

For one restaurant whose case was documented by the Ministry of Agriculture, this inspection took place about three weeks after the closure. Business resumed as soon as the prefectural order was received. That is one example, not a typical timeline.

In the Val-de-Marne in 2025, more than four out of five businesses reopened after this inspection (Ministry of Agriculture, February 20, 2026).

Need the list of businesses under a closure order? We send it with the contact details available, for the scope you choose.

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DDPP health inspections: who comes, and who decides on closure?#

Official food safety inspections fall under the Ministry of Agriculture. It counts 106,000 inspections a year, 52,000 of them in commercial foodservice (DGAL, the ministry's food directorate, February 2026).

DDPP inspectors, from the Directorate for the Protection of Populations at the département level (a département is a French administrative area comparable to a county), inspect restaurants and other foodservice businesses. A step-by-step description of the inspection appears in our article on the restaurant hygiene inspection.

Closure remains rare. In the Val-de-Marne, the DDPP inspected nearly 1,900 businesses in 2025. Nearly 2% of those inspections led to an administrative closure, according to the ministry.

That is a local figure, not a national average. The 2% figure covers all inspections in the département; the figure of 322 out of 333 covers only the most severe ratings in the national file.

Who decides? The Rural Code speaks of "the administrative authority." Its article D233-20 specifies that this means the "prefect of the département where the business is located" (the prefect represents the national government in the département). In the case documented by the ministry, a prefectural order posted on the storefront announced the closure. Another prefectural order authorized the reopening.

Do you run the affected restaurant? Causes, procedure, appeals and employee pay

Causes of an administrative closure for hygiene violations#

The criterion is written in article L233-1 of the Rural Code. The business must present, or risk presenting, "a threat to public health." The text does not list specific violations: what counts is the danger to the consumer.

The causes of administrative closure are not limited to hygiene. Two separate texts exist:

  • food hygiene and safety: article L233-1 of the Rural Code, when public health is threatened;
  • illegal work, including undeclared work: article L8272-2 of the Labor Code allows the prefect to close the business for no more than three months through a decision stating the grounds for closure.

Do not mix the two up. The three-month limit applies to illegal work, not to a closure tied to hygiene.

The administrative closure procedure: formal notice, then closure#

The text speaks of a "formal notice" (mise en demeure), not a warning. The administrative closure procedure in article L233-1 follows this order:

  1. The agents put the operator on formal notice to act within a set deadline.
  2. The operator submits written or oral comments and may be assisted by counsel.
  3. If the measures are not taken by the deadline, the authority may close all or part of the business. Condition: the deadline cannot be extended without risk to public health.

There is a faster route. In an emergency, to prevent "serious and imminent dangers" to public health, the authority may order immediate closure. It may then require the decision, or an excerpt from it, to be posted where it is visible from outside.

Closure is not the only penalty. The ministry also cites administrative fines, reports of criminal violations and withdrawal of the affected products from the market.

When and how to contest an administrative closure?#

Your first opportunity to respond comes before the decision: the formal notice gives you time to submit comments.

Once issued, the closure decision is an administrative act. There are two ways to contest it. The first is an informal appeal (recours gracieux) to the prefect, who made the decision, within 2 months (3 months in overseas territories), according to Service-public. The second is an appeal to the administrative court within 2 months of the notification of the decision (article R421-1 of the Code of Administrative Justice).

In an emergency, a judge hearing a request for interim relief can suspend the decision if an argument in the appeal (a "moyen," in legal terms) raises a "serious doubt as to the legality of the decision": this is the référé-suspension (article L521-1 of the same code). A lawyer can help you choose the right option for your case.

Consequences of an administrative closure: who pays employees?#

For a business closed because of illegal work, the law provides a clear answer. According to article L8272-3 of the Labor Code, it causes "neither termination, nor suspension of the employment contract, nor any financial loss" for employees.

For a closure due to hygiene violations, we found no legal text that answers the question as clearly. Before suspending pay, ask your lawyer or your accountant.

Method#

The Scalon figure comes from the Observatory's study of poorly rated food businesses, published October 14, 2026. The study uses the official Alim'confiance file from the Direction générale de l'alimentation (the French food directorate-general), downloaded on September 25, 2026, covering inspections carried out from September 26, 2025, to September 24, 2026. On that date, 333 "needing urgent correction" ratings were displayed across all food businesses; 322 listed closure or a halt in operations as the follow-up action.

Sources#

The list of businesses under a closure order, for your area and your target: we send it within two business days.

Get the full list