Some electromagnetic materials have, in a given frequency range, an effective dielectric permittivity and/or a magnetic permeability which are real-valued negative coefficients when dissipation is neglected. They are usually called metamaterials. We study a scalar transmission problem between a classical dielectric material and a metamaterial, set in an open, bounded subset of R^d, with d=2,3. Our aim is to characterize occurences where the problem is well-posed within the Fredholm (or coercive + compact) framework. For that, we build some criteria, based on the geometry of the interface between the dielectric and the metamaterial. The proofs combine simple geometrical arguments with the approach of T-coercivity, introduced by the first and third authors and co-worker. Furthermore, the use of localization techniques allows us to derive well-posedness under conditions that involve the knowledge of the coefficients only near the interface. When the coefficients are piecewise constant, we establish the optimality of the criteria.