France email open tracking rules and Recharge: What you need to know

Recharge is committed to helping you stay informed. Following a new recommendation from France’s data protection authority, CNIL, on email open tracking, Recharge added a store-level setting to help you manage compliance for your French customers.

This article explains how France's email open tracking guidance affects you, how the Enable open tracking setting works, and what you should consider if you have customers in France.

Overview

On April 14, 2026, the Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) formally adopted a recommendation on tracking pixels in emails, Decision No. 2026-042. The recommendation applies existing EU ePrivacy rules, the same rules that govern cookies, to invisible tracking pixels used to measure email opens.

Under this guidance, tracking an individual recipient’s email opens generally requires prior, opt-in consent from that recipient, separate from whatever permission you have to email them in the first place. This applies to recipients located in France, regardless of where your business is based.

What the CNIL recommendation covers

• Open tracking requires consent. Loading a tracking pixel to record whether a specific person opened an email is treated like a cookie and needs opt-in consent before it fires.
• A narrow exception exists for automated deliverability purposes. Open-tracking data used strictly for automated deliverability purposes, such as identifying inactive addresses to adjust send frequency, may qualify for an exception, provided that data is not used for general performance reporting.
• This is separate from your right to send the email. Many transactional and marketing emails can still be sent under your existing legal basis. This recommendation concerns the tracking pixel, not the message itself.

What this means for you

If you have subscribers in France, or you market to French customers, email open tracking for those messages may require consent you likely did not collect today.

To help you manage this, Recharge has added a store-level Enable open tracking that can be disabled at the store level:

• Default: Set to On, consistent with standard industry defaults for email service providers.
• What it does: When switched Off, Recharge does not include open-tracking pixels in any outgoing customer emails for your store. No opens are tracked for any recipient.

Determine whether you need to take action

Assess your exposure. Review your customer base for French billing addresses, shipping addresses, .fr domains, or other indicators that you have subscribers located in France.

• If you have French customers, consider turning open tracking off in your settings, or consult your legal counsel about alternative ways to obtain consent before enabling tracking for those recipients.
• If you do not sell to or market toward France, keep the default On setting to preserve your existing open-rate reporting.

Update your email notification settings

Update your email notification settings in the Recharge merchant portal:

1.  In your Recharge merchant portal, click Email and select Settings.
2. Locate Enable open tracking. 
3. Switch this setting off to ensure open-tracking pixels are not included in emails sent to your customers.