The European Central Bank announced on 13 February 2026 that it had imposed periodic penalty payments totalling €7,551,050 on Crédit Agricole S.A. for failing to comply with a supervisory requirement to assess the materiality of its climate-related and environmental risks. The ECB decision is dated 3 February 2026.
According to the ECB, a decision of 8 February 2024 required the French banking group to carry out the materiality assessment by 31 May 2024. Crédit Agricole did not comply with the requirement for 75 full days in 2024. The ECB said it set the amount of the penalty taking into account the materiality of the infringement, the duration of the breach and the daily turnover of the supervised entity.
SUPERVISORY ESCALATION
The ECB said the measure followed a progressive supervisory escalation that began in 2020 with the publication of its guide on climate-related and environmental risks, continued with a climate stress test and a thematic review in 2022 that resulted in feedback letters to banks, and led to binding decisions providing for the accrual of periodic penalty payments where bank-specific deadlines were not met.
Periodic penalty payments are amounts that a supervised bank must pay if it continues to breach its obligations under prudential regulations or ECB supervisory decisions. They can be imposed for each day of the infringement, at up to 5% of the institution's average daily turnover, for a maximum period of six months.
The ECB's enforcement register lists only one earlier periodic penalty payment: €187,650 imposed on Spain's ABANCA Corporación Bancaria in a decision dated 29 October 2025, also over a climate-related and environmental risk materiality assessment. Crédit Agricole may challenge the decision before the Court of Justice of the European Union.
Crédit Agricole said it acknowledged the decision but expressed a lack of understanding regarding what it called a purely administrative penalty relating only to the timing of its response to one ECB requirement, and said the ECB had confirmed that it had met all of its requirements.