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France is the second-largest EU economy and one of the markets most B2B SaaS teams need to support early. The French VAT number — numéro de TVA intracommunautaire — has a slightly unusual structure compared to most member states: a two-character key sits between the country code and the SIREN. That key is checksummable, which is useful, but the authoritative yes/no still comes from VIES or, when VIES FR is degraded, from French national sources. Here is the full pipeline in Node.js.
What a French VAT number looks like
The French VAT ID is built on top of the company's SIREN (the 9-digit national company identifier issued by INSEE). The full format is:
FR — country code
