RGESN

Yes, for central government digital services and for local authorities with more than 50,000 inhabitants. Under the REEN law, they must publish an eco-design declaration and update it every year. For the private sector, the framework remains voluntary. The monitoring regime is lighter than the RGAA's, where breaches are directly punishable, which explains why the RGESN is often seen as a mere recommendation.

The RGESN deals with the environmental footprint of a service, the RGAA with its accessibility. They do not have the same issuing authority, the same assessment method or the same penalty regime. The two are addressed at the same time on a project, and several of their criteria overlap: a page carrying fewer scripts loads faster and is easier to work through with a screen reader.

Version 2, published in May 2024, contains 78 criteria spread across 9 families, from strategy and governance to technical architecture, including content, interface and hosting. The initial 2022 version had 79, organised differently. Each family concerns different disciplines, which means spreading the assessment out rather than entrusting it to a single person.

The approach rests on a self-assessment, criterion by criterion, followed by the publication of an eco-design declaration. This public document, dated and signed, describes the service concerned, the scope assessed, the score obtained and the improvement plan under way. It is linked from the service's footer and updated at least once a year.

There is no shortage of options, so it pays to know what you are looking at. Automated tools return a rating or a letter based on what can be measured on a page: transferred weight, requests, document structure. The letter is easy to display, but it depends above all on how the pages are coded, to the point where a very light site can end up with a poor rating. Other players run audits that end in a score or a label, whose value rests on the method and the scope assessed. The RGESN, for its part, also examines the strategy and the lifespan of the service, which neither a tool nor a page measures. A rating remains a starting point, not proof.