A little over a year after its launch, the plan to make the energy performance certificate (DPE — Diagnostic de Performance Énergétique, the French Energy Performance Certificate) more reliable has changed in nature. Announced by Valérie Létard on 19 March 2025, it set out to correct the image of a certificate widely seen as unreliable. Text after text, it has become a genuine crackdown on the profession: a cap of 1,000 DPE per year per assessor, a public blacklist of sanctioned professionals, quadrupled controls, automated statistical detection of suspicious behaviour by ADEME, and — on the table since the Labaronne report of 28 November 2025 — a professional framework for the sector.
For an owner about to sell or let, this tightening is not just a matter of state. It directly affects the very document on which the letting ban for thermal sieves, your property's advertised price and renovation subsidies all rest. A "complaisant" DPE issued by an assessor now under surveillance is a certificate exposed to a control, a withdrawal and a renegotiation. Here is what has actually changed, and what our own data say about the effect on reliability.
Around 70,000 fraudulent DPE a year out of 4 million issued — roughly 1.7% of the total, according to figures from the French Ministry of Housing (19 March 2025). It is this volume that the 2025 measures aim to push back.
What this article covers
The regulatory substance of the Létard plan one year on: the 1,000-DPE-a-year cap (ministerial order of 28 July 2025), the blacklist of sanctioned assessors, controls raised to 10,000 a year, the QR code mandatory since 1 September 2025, the statistical and artificial-intelligence detection entrusted to ADEME, and the professional-body project arising from the Labaronne mission. Then what these measures change in practice for a seller or a landlord, what our data already measure, and the pitfalls to avoid.
The Létard plan one year on: from communication to binding regulation
On 19 March 2025, the French Minister of Housing Valérie Létard unveiled a ten-measure action plan to fight "complaisant" or fraudulent DPE. The energy performance certificate has been the central document of rental law since the Climate & Resilience Act of 22 August 2021 (Law no. 2021-1104): it is the certificate that classes a home as a thermal sieve and triggers the letting ban on G-rated dwellings since 1 January 2025 (article L.173-1-1 of the French Construction and Housing Code). A biased certificate therefore distorts both the rental market and the sale price.
The ministry quantified the problem: around 70,000 fraudulent DPE a year, out of 4 million certificates issued, or close to 1.7% of the total. Several of the ten measures have since come into force through regulation, mainly via two texts published in the Official Journal: the ministerial order of 16 June 2025 (amending the DPE orders of 31 March 2021) and the order of 28 July 2025 defining the anomalies in an assessor's activity.
| Measure | Substance | Text / entry into force |
|---|---|---|
| Activity cap | More than 1,000 DPE for houses or flats over a rolling 12 months = suspension, unless justified | Order of 28 July 2025 — in force 1 October 2025 |
| Mandatory QR code | ADEME authentication of every DPE, verifiable by scan | Since 1 September 2025 |
| Reinforced controls | Rise to 10,000 controls a year, at least one per assessor | Order of 16 June 2025 — ramp-up in 2025 |
| Tougher sanctions | Practice ban of 18 months (first fraud) to 2 years (repeat offence), against 6 months previously | Order of 16 June 2025 |
| Statistical detection | ADEME spots anomalies and flags suspicious cases to certification bodies | Orders of 16 June and 28 July 2025 |
The application schedule of the 16 June 2025 order is staggered: its article 1 came into force on 1 July 2025, articles 2 to 6 on 1 September 2025, and article 7 on 1 October 2025. The assessor's presence on site is now a requirement: a DPE issued without a real visit is exposed to rejection.
The 1,000-DPE-a-year cap: the measure that targets diagnostic factories
This is the most emblematic and the most immediately operative measure. Since 1 October 2025, any assessor issuing strictly more than 1,000 DPE for houses or flats over a rolling twelve-month period is automatically subject to suspension of their certification, unless they provide a valid justification. The rule appears in the order of 28 July 2025, whose title is explicit: it defines "the anomalies revealing a manifestly unfeasible exercise of the assessor's activity".
Why 1,000?
The reasoning is arithmetic. A compliant DPE requires an on-site visit, readings, measurements and data entry. Beyond a certain pace, the rhythm becomes materially incompatible with following the protocol: this is what the text calls a "manifestly unfeasible" exercise. A thousand dwelling certificates a year represent a volume a serious professional rarely reaches without delegating or rushing the visit. The threshold does not penalise productivity in itself, but signals a strong statistical risk of non-compliance, which triggers a control.
The count explicitly excludes DPE generated from the data of a collective-building diagnosis and the collective-building DPE themselves: an assessor who issues a collective DPE and then breaks down the ratings flat by flat is not penalised by this volume mechanism.
Profile: the "industrial" assessor who churns out several dozen DPE a week over long distances — this is precisely the model the cap and the analysis of travel between two assessments seek to flush out.
ADEME's statistical and AI detection
The cap is only the visible part of a wider mechanism. The government has tasked ADEME (the French Environment and Energy Management Agency) with automatically detecting statistical irregularities in the DPE database and flagging suspicious cases to certification bodies. Using statistical-analysis and artificial-intelligence tools, ADEME's DPE Observatory spots several anomaly profiles: certificates produced in abnormally short timeframes, ratings systematically sitting at the boundary between two classes (typically a home "set" just below the thermal-sieve threshold), or assessments inconsistent with comparable properties. Travel of more than 40 kilometres between two DPE issued on the same day is among the signals examined.
The stated goal is to analyse the 4 million most recent DPE and evaluate 10,000 assessors by the end of 2025, then provide continuous monitoring. In practice, an atypical certificate is no longer a needle in a haystack: it becomes a statistical point that stands out from the analysis of the national database.
Blacklist, QR code and controls: traceability becomes the rule
Beyond the cap, the plan has installed a logic of traceability and transparency that touches every certificate.
The blacklist of sanctioned assessors
The names of sanctioned assessors are now placed on an accessible blacklist, which already listed more than 500 professionals banned from practising by mid-2024. Coupled with tougher sanctions — the practice ban rises from 6 months to 18 months for a first fraud, and up to 2 years for a repeat offence — this publicity changes the equation for a professional tempted by a complaisant DPE: the sanction is no longer merely administrative, it is reputational and public.
The QR code mandatory since 1 September 2025
Since 1 September 2025, every DPE must carry an official QR code linking to ADEME. A simple scan checks that the certificate is properly registered in the national database and that its data match the document presented. This mechanism makes the circulation of fake DPE — copied, altered or invented — much harder: a buyer or a tenant can verify the document's authenticity before signing.
Quadrupled controls and a required on-site presence
The number of controls has risen sharply: the target is 10,000 controls a year, against about 8,000 in 2024 and of the order of 3,000 two years earlier, with at least one annual control per assessor. The professional's presence on site must be proven, and the immediate display of the result to the owner has been removed to limit the pressure put on the assessor during the assessment. Oversight of the certification bodies themselves has been reinforced, with shorter inspection intervals.
⚠️ Warning: a DPE issued by an assessor later suspended or blacklisted does not automatically become void, but it loses all credibility in a dispute. Before buying or signing a lease, scanning the QR code and checking the assessor's certification has become an elementary precaution.
Towards a professional framework: what the Labaronne report says
The tenth measure of the plan was the most structural: to study the creation of an order of real estate diagnosticians, on the model of the orders of doctors or lawyers. On 28 April 2025, the minister entrusted this mission to Daniel Labaronne, a member of parliament for Indre-et-Loire. His report was submitted on 28 November 2025 to Vincent Jeanbrun, Minister of Housing.
Its main conclusion is nuanced: the report did not recommend creating a fully fledged professional order, judged too cumbersome to set up, but proposes a reinforced framework for the sector, sometimes described as a "quasi-order". It puts forward nine proposals intended to structure the profession, fight fraud and guarantee DPE reliability — among them the creation of a "certified real estate diagnostic expert" title, the preservation of the assessor's independence, a strict separation between training and certification bodies, a public reporting platform, and the integration of digital tools. The report refers the choice of a governance model to "Assises du diagnostic immobilier" (a sector convention) planned for the first quarter of 2026.
For owners, the timetable matters less than the direction: the era when a DPE could be a complaisant document mass-produced on a conveyor belt is closing. The profession is moving towards more traceability, control and accountability — and the certificate mechanically gains in probative value.
What our data already measure
The angle that interests us at OneDpe is not only regulatory: it is the real effect on reliability, measurable in the data. We analyse the national DPE database to detect technical inconsistencies — physically improbable ratings, consumption figures inconsistent with the declared heat losses, clusters of suspicious dwellings in the same building.
Finding — major inconsistencies in the housing stock
Our 2026 DPE reliability barometer showed that a non-negligible share of certificates carry at least one major technical inconsistency. This is exactly the kind of signal that ADEME's statistical analysis now seeks to industrialise on a national scale. The two approaches converge: a DPE "set" just below the thermal-sieve threshold, a rating inconsistent with comparable properties, or an implausible consumption given the declared insulation stand out as much in our detectors as on the Observatory's radar.
The practical lesson is clear: an owner need not wait for an administrative control to fall before knowing whether their DPE is solid. Cross-checking the rating, the consumption and the property's characteristics makes it possible to spot a fragile certificate upstream — precisely the one most likely to be flagged by the new surveillance, or challenged by an informed buyer.
What to check on your DPE: that the rating is not suspiciously parked at the boundary of two classes, that the stated consumption is consistent with the floor area and heating system, that the QR code does link back to ADEME, and that the assessor is not on the list of sanctioned professionals.
Check the solidity of your DPE before a control does
Our tool analyses your certificate line by line: it cross-checks the energy and climate rating, the declared consumption, the floor area and the heating system to detect technical inconsistencies — a rating suspiciously at a class boundary, an implausible consumption, signs of a complaisant DPE. In a few minutes you know whether your certificate would withstand an ADEME control or a buyer's challenge.
To go further: the 2026 DPE reliability barometer and our estimate of the discount by DPE class.
Conclusion
In one year, the Létard plan has moved from a statement of intent to an operative regulatory arsenal: a 1,000-DPE-a-year cap, a public blacklist, controls raised to 10,000 a year, a mandatory QR code, statistical detection by ADEME and, in prospect, a professional framework arising from the Labaronne report. For owners, the message is simple: the DPE becomes a document under surveillance, and a fragile certificate now exposes you to a control, a withdrawal and a renegotiation.
The best protection is still to anticipate. The OneDpe DPE verification tool lets you test the consistency of your certificate before a sale or a letting, and identify the signals that draw the new surveillance — before the administration or a buyer does it for you.
