Authorities in France have issued a warning about tens of thousands of condoms that were sold and do not meet the necessary standards.
More than 40,000 “non-compliant” condoms have been sold online, despite lacking the CE mark and therefore failing to comply with regulations, French officials said on Friday.
France’s Directorate for Consumer Protection and Health warned that these contraceptives are “likely to pose serious risks to users’ health and safety,” including the transmission of sexually transmitted infections and unwanted pregnancies.
Online platforms have been urged to remove the defective products from their websites.
The authorities subsequently carried out checks in shops and found further defects. A total of 260,000 condoms were recalled because they were at risk of tearing or might contain holes. Just over 115 million condoms were sold in France in 2024.
The authorities recommend that anyone who has recently used the contraceptives now identified as faulty should get tested for sexually transmitted infections and, if necessary, for pregnancy.
Condoms offer one of the most effective methods of protection against sexually transmitted infections (STIs) like HIV, syphilis and chlamydia, yet the World Health Organization estimates that a million people are infected with such diseases every day.
The UN body’s health experts say awareness of a growing number of treatments for such infections is leading people to be less careful and to neglect condoms. More than a million pregnant women were estimated to have been infected with syphilis in 2022, leading to over 390,000 adverse birth outcomes, the health body says.