You shipped the goods, the invoice is overdue, and then the email arrives: your French customer has entered redressement judiciaire (court-supervised rescue proceedings) or liquidation judiciaire (court-ordered winding-up). From London, New York or Dubai, the temptation is to keep calling the buyer, to send another reminder, or to instruct a local debt collector. In France, none of that works anymore. The opening judgment (jugement d’ouverture) freezes every individual claim on day one, hands the file to a court-appointed receiver (mandataire judiciaire), and starts a short clock: miss the declaration deadline and your claim is shut out of every payout. Foreign creditors even get a specific extension, but only if they use it correctly. This guide walks you through the exact sequence — declaring your claim from abroad, reclaiming unpaid goods still sitting at the buyer’s warehouse, understanding where you rank in the payout order, and contesting a rejection — with the statutory texts and court decisions that actually decide these cases.
I. Your French Customer Is Insolvent: What Freezes on Day One and How to Declare Your Claim From Abroad
The day the commercial court (tribunal des activités économiques, formerly the tribunal de commerce) opens proceedings, your French debtor loses control of its debts. Understanding that freeze is the first step, because every mistake foreign suppliers make — suing for payment, seizing goods, offsetting invoices — happens in the first two weeks.
Three French terms will follow you through the whole file. The mandataire judiciaire is the court-appointed insolvency practitioner who collects claims and pays dividends. The juge-commissaire is the supervising judge who admits or rejects each claim and hears requests for extra time. The BODACC (Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales) is the official gazette where the opening judgment is published — and publication is what starts your deadline running.
A. How to Declare Your Claim on Time From Abroad and Survive the Two-Month Deadline
The opening judgment stops all individual lawsuits dead. Article L. 622-21 of the Commercial Code provides that “Le jugement d’ouverture interrompt ou interdit toute action en justice de la part de tous les créanciers”, where the action seeks either “A la condamnation du débiteur au paiement d’une somme d’argent” or “A la résolution d’un contrat pour défaut de paiement d’une somme d’argent”. In plain English: from day one, you can no longer sue your customer for the unpaid invoice, nor terminate the contract for non-payment, through ordinary proceedings. Pending lawsuits are interrupted, new ones are barred, and enforcement measures (voies d’exécution) are stopped. The same freeze applies in liquidation by reference: article L. 641-3 of the Commercial Code extends the effects of the opening judgment, including the stay of individual proceedings, to judgments opening liquidation judiciaire.
The debtor is also forbidden from paying you directly, even if it wants to. Article L. 622-7 of the Commercial Code states that “Le jugement ouvrant la procédure emporte, de plein droit, interdiction de payer toute créance née antérieurement au jugement d’ouverture, à l’exception du paiement par compensation de créances connexes”. Any payment you extract privately after the opening judgment can be clawed back, and it buys you no priority. The only lawful route is the collective one: declare (déclarer sa créance), get admitted (admission au passif), and share in the distributions.
Declaration is mandatory even if you hold a signed contract, an acknowledged invoice or a foreign judgment. Article L. 622-24 of the Commercial Code provides that “A partir de la publication du jugement, tous les créanciers dont la créance est née antérieurement au jugement d’ouverture, à l’exception des salariés, adressent la déclaration de leurs créances au mandataire judiciaire dans des délais fixés par décret en Conseil d’Etat”. Note the breadth: every pre-opening claim, “doit être faite alors même qu’elles ne sont pas établies par un titre” — you must declare even claims not yet evidenced by a formal title — and claims whose amount is not yet fixed are declared on the basis of an estimate. A foreign supplier waiting for an arbitration award or a final statement of account must therefore declare an evaluated amount now and update it later, not wait for the final figure.
The standard deadline is two months from publication in the BODACC, and foreign creditors get double time. Article R. 622-24 of the Commercial Code states: “Le délai de déclaration fixé en application de l’article L. 622-26 est de deux mois à compter de la publication du jugement d’ouverture au Bulletin officiel des annonces civiles et commerciales.” It then adds the extension that matters to every reader of this guide: “Lorsque la procédure est ouverte par une juridiction qui a son siège sur le territoire de la France métropolitaine, le délai de déclaration est augmenté de deux mois pour les créanciers qui ne demeurent pas sur ce territoire.” A supplier based in London, New York, Singapore or Dubai therefore has four months from BODACC publication — not two — when the case is opened by a mainland French court. Do not confuse this with the personal warning (avertissement) the mandataire judiciaire sends to secured creditors or creditors bound by a published contract: for those creditors, time runs from notification of that warning, but an ordinary foreign trade supplier should diary the BODACC publication date plus four months and treat any personal letter as a bonus, not as the starting point.
Practical declaration from abroad follows a fixed checklist. First, identify the case: search the debtor’s name on the BODACC portal and on the greffe (court registry) record to confirm the court, the judgment date, the type of proceedings and the appointed mandataire judiciaire with its address for claims. The debtor’s Kbis extract — the official company identity document issued by the greffe — will confirm the registered office and therefore the competent court. Second, assemble proof: contract, purchase orders, delivery notes signed at the French warehouse, invoices, reminders, account statements and any retention-of-title clause (more on that below). Third, state the amount precisely: principal, contractual late-payment penalties and collection costs where your terms allow them, with interest stopped at the opening date — post-opening interest generally does not accrue on admitted claims. Fourth, send the declaration to the mandataire judiciaire by a traceable route (registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt from abroad, or the practitioner’s online claims portal where offered), keeping proof of dispatch. The statute allows filing by an agent of your choice (article L. 622-24 of the Commercial Code): “La déclaration des créances peut être faite par le créancier ou par tout préposé ou mandataire de son choix.” A French lawyer or the practitioner’s English-language form removes translation friction, and the creditor may ratify a declaration made in its name until the judge rules on admission. Fifth, if the debtor itself forwarded your claim to the practitioner, you benefit from a presumption — “Lorsque le débiteur a porté une créance à la connaissance du mandataire judiciaire, il est présumé avoir agi pour le compte du créancier” — but that presumption lasts only until you file your own declaration, so file anyway.
What happens next is verification (vérification du passif). Article L. 624-1 of the Commercial Code provides that “Dans le délai fixé par le tribunal, le mandataire judiciaire établit, après avoir sollicité les observations du débiteur, la liste des créances déclarées avec ses propositions d’admission, de rejet ou de renvoi devant la juridiction compétente. Il transmet cette liste au juge-commissaire.” The debtor’s silence at this stage is punished: a debtor that files no observations within the regulatory deadline cannot contest the practitioner’s proposal later. For the foreign creditor, the lesson is symmetrical — answer every request for documents from the mandataire judiciaire fast, in French wherever possible, because the admission proposal is built on your file. The juge-commissaire then rules claim by claim: article L. 624-2 of the Commercial Code states that “Au vu des propositions du mandataire judiciaire, le juge-commissaire, si la demande d’admission est recevable, décide de l’admission ou du rejet des créances ou constate soit qu’une instance est en cours, soit que la contestation ne relève pas de sa compétence”. Admission fixes your place in the payout order; rejection forces you to appeal (see Part II.B); a finding that proceedings are pending or that the dispute falls outside the judge’s jurisdiction sends the substance of the dispute to the competent court while your declared claim waits in line.
One warning specific to foreign groups: if your French customer is a subsidiary and you also hold a guarantee from its foreign parent — or the reverse, you guaranteed the French debtor — declaration in the French proceedings does not waive your rights against the co-obligor or guarantor, but any dividend you receive reduces the claim against them. Coordinate the French declaration with enforcement abroad rather than running both tracks blind.
B. How to Reclaim Goods You Shipped but Were Never Paid For: Revendication and Retention of Title
Declaration gets you a share of the cash pot — often a small one. Revendication (action en revendication) can get your goods back in full, outside the payout queue, provided you act within a strict three-month window and the goods are still there. For a foreign supplier of equipment, components, stock or branded products, this is routinely the highest-value move in the file, and it is also the most time-sensitive.
The deadline is brutal and runs from publication, not from when you learn the news. Article L. 624-9 of the Commercial Code provides in a single sentence: “La revendication des meubles ne peut être exercée que dans le délai de trois mois suivant la publication du jugement ouvrant la procédure.” Three months from BODACC publication — no extension for foreign creditors here — to assert ownership of movable goods in the debtor’s hands. A supplier in Chicago that discovers the French customer’s liquidation five months later through a credit insurer has already lost revendication as a remedy, even with a perfect retention-of-title clause. Diary this deadline the day you hear of the proceedings, and send the revendication demand to the mandataire judiciaire (or liquidateur in liquidation) by registered letter within the window, identifying the goods precisely by serial number, batch, delivery note and clause.
The classic legal basis is the retention-of-title clause (clause de réserve de propriété) in your general terms or supply contract. Article L. 624-16 of the Commercial Code allows the seller to reclaim where ownership never passed: “Peuvent également être revendiqués, s’ils se retrouvent en nature au moment de l’ouverture de la procédure, les biens vendus avec une clause de réserve de propriété.” Two conditions decide everything. First, the clause must have been agreed in writing no later than delivery — “Cette clause doit avoir été convenue entre les parties dans un écrit au plus tard au moment de la livraison” — and it may sit in a framework document governing a series of commercial operations, which validates the standard practice of placing the clause in general terms of sale accepted before first delivery. An invoice that mentions retention of title for the first time, after delivery, is worthless against the buyer’s insolvency. Second, the goods must still exist in kind (en nature) at the opening date: unopened stock, unused components, machines still on the buyer’s floor. Goods already resold to a sub-buyer, incorporated into another product, or consumed in production can no longer be reclaimed as such — though the price may still be recoverable, as shown below.
Where the debtor already resold your goods to its own customer, French law offers a second chance: reclaim the unpaid resale price. Article L. 624-18 of the Commercial Code provides: “Peut être revendiqué le prix ou la partie du prix des biens visés à l’article L. 624-16 qui n’a été ni payé, ni réglé en valeur, ni compensé entre le débiteur et l’acheteur à la date du jugement ouvrant la procédure.” The Cour de cassation confirmed the breadth of this remedy in a published decision: “peut être revendiqué le prix qui n’a été ni payé, ni réglé en valeur ni compensé entre le sous-acquéreur et le débiteur à la date de l’ouverture de la procédure collective de celui-ci”, adding that “si les marchandises revendues n’ont fait l’objet d’aucun règlement entre eux avant ou après cette ouverture, la revendication est possible” (Cass. com., 3 Nov. 2015, No. 13-26.811, published in the Bulletin). In that case, unpaid goods bought from the supplier France Gift had been resold by the insolvent buyer BCR to two sub-buyers that had never paid; the Court upheld revendication of the price precisely because no payment had moved between sub-buyer and debtor. For the foreign supplier, the practical message is sharp: as soon as proceedings open, ask the mandataire judiciaire in writing whether your goods were resold and whether the sub-buyer has paid. If the resale price is still outstanding, revendicate the price within the same three-month window rather than joining the unsecured queue.
Goods lent, leased or consigned to the French customer — demo equipment, consignment stock, tooling, leased machines — follow the same three-month path under the first half of article L. 624-16: “Peuvent être revendiqués, à condition qu’ils se retrouvent en nature, les biens meubles remis à titre précaire au débiteur”. Here no retention-of-title clause is needed; the loan, lease or consignment agreement itself proves your ownership, provided the asset is identifiable. Fiduciary transfers where the debtor kept use of the asset benefit from the same text. In every case the debtor’s opening inventory helps you: article L. 622-6 of the Commercial Code requires an inventory of the debtor’s assets that “est complété par le débiteur par la mention des biens qu’il détient susceptibles d’être revendiqués par un tiers” — request a copy of that inventory from the practitioner and cross-check it against your delivery records.
Two evidentiary habits separate successful revendication from failed attempts. First, keep delivery and identification records that survive translation: signed delivery slips, warehouse receipts, serial-number lists, photographs of branded packaging in the buyer’s premises. Second, prove the clause predates delivery: accepted general terms, a signed framework agreement, order confirmations referencing the terms. French courts apply the writing-and-timing condition strictly, and a foreign supplier whose clause lives only in unaccepted quotations or post-delivery invoices will be reclassified as an ordinary unsecured creditor.
II. Getting Paid in a French Insolvency: Ranking, Rescue Plans and How to Contest From Abroad
Once your claim is admitted — or your goods reclaimed — the question becomes money: when, how much, and what to do when the answer disappoints. French insolvency pays creditors in a rigid order, increasingly through court-approved plans that stretch payments over years, and every adverse decision carries a short appeal window that a foreign creditor must be ready to use.
A. Where Your Claim Ranks and What Rescue or Repayment Plans Pay Foreign Creditors
Start with ranking, because it sets expectations. Employee wage claims guaranteed by the AGS (Association pour la gestion du régime de garantie des créances des salariés, the French wage-guarantee fund) come first in practice. Then come procedural costs, then secured creditors holding published security (sûretés publiées such as mortgages, pledges or fiduciary transfers), each paid from their collateral. Ordinary foreign trade suppliers are créanciers chirographaires — unsecured creditors — paid last, from whatever remains, usually as a percentage dividend (dividende) of the admitted amount. Post-opening claims that qualify as useful to the proceedings (créances postérieures utiles, under article L. 622-17) are paid at maturity ahead of pre-opening claims, which is why a foreign supplier that keeps delivering after the opening judgment should secure the practitioner’s written commitment that the new deliveries qualify — never deliver post-opening on a handshake.
In redressement judiciaire, the likely outcome is a court-approved continuation or repayment plan (plan de redressement or plan de sauvegarde) that reschedules debts over up to ten years, sometimes with partial write-offs (abandons de créances) or debt-for-equity swaps for consenting creditors. Foreign unsecured creditors are bound by the plan once approved, even if they voted against it or did not vote, provided their claim was duly admitted. Dividends under the plan arrive annually through the commissaire à l’exécution du plan (plan supervisor) to the bank details you declared — keep those details current with the practitioner, because stale foreign account details are a classic reason dividends go unclaimed. In liquidation judiciaire, the liquidateur sells the assets and distributes the proceeds in ranking order; unsecured recoveries of a few percent are common, which is precisely why the revendication route in Part I matters so much more than passively waiting for a dividend.
Cross-border European cases add a notification layer that protects you. Where the French proceedings fall under EU Regulation 2015/848 on insolvency proceedings, known foreign creditors in other Member States must receive individual notice of the opening, with the time limit for lodging claims and the consequences of missing it, and they may lodge claims in an official EU language using standard forms. In practice, do not rely on that notice arriving: monitor the BODACC yourself, because the four-month declaration extension under article R. 622-24 runs from publication regardless of when — or whether — the European notice reaches your desk. For debtors outside the EU, no equivalent notice duty exists; self-monitoring is everything.
Tax and social follows its own track and should not alarm you. The French Treasury and social-security bodies (URSSAF, the agency collecting employer social contributions) declare provisionally and finalize later; their dividends do not reduce yours directly. But if you employ staff through the French customer or second workers to its site, any unpaid French payroll charges attached to your own French establishment are a separate liability — a question this guide does not cover, and one to raise with counsel alongside the claim file. For orientation on running a French company from abroad generally, see our pillar guide for foreign founders on setting up a company in France: bank account, Kbis, VAT and first hire.
B. How to Contest Rejection and Lift Foreclosure When You Missed the Deadline
A rejection (rejet) or a missed deadline (forclusion) is not the end of the file — it is the start of a second, shorter race. Three remedies cover nearly every foreign creditor’s situation: challenge the rejection, seek relief from foreclosure, and refer the substance of seriously disputed claims to the competent court.
If the juge-commissaire rejects your claim or admits it only in part, you can appeal to the court that opened the proceedings within the short statutory deadline running from notification of the order — in practice, days, not months. The appeal goes to the commercial court, which re-examines admission on the documents. Foreign creditors lose these appeals for avoidable reasons: appeal filed late because the order sat unread in a spam folder, grounds limited to a cover letter instead of the missing invoice, or no French-language exhibits. Treat every letter from the mandataire judiciaire or the greffe as potentially starting a deadline: have a French correspondent address on file — your lawyer’s office — so notifications are received, translated and diaried the same day.
If you missed the declaration deadline entirely, the statute offers relevé de forclusion — relief lifting the time bar. Article L. 622-26 of the Commercial Code provides: “A défaut de déclaration dans les délais prévus à l’article L. 622-24 , les créanciers ne sont pas admis dans les répartitions et les dividendes à moins que le juge-commissaire ne les relève de leur forclusion s’ils établissent que leur défaillance n’est pas due à leur fait ou qu’elle est due à une omission du débiteur lors de l’établissement de la liste prévue au deuxième alinéa de l’article L. 622-6 .” Two doors, one judge. Either your failure was not your fault — late BODACC publication in a language you could not reasonably monitor is not enough alone, but a practitioner’s failure to warn a creditor entitled to personal notice, a postal strike documented by the carrier, or hospitalization of the sole manager can qualify — or the debtor omitted your claim from the creditor list it was required to prepare. A foreign address, alone, rarely suffices, since the four-month extension already compensates distance; show concrete impediment plus diligence. Relief, when granted, only qualifies you for distributions after your request (“Ils ne peuvent alors concourir que pour les distributions postérieures à leur demande”), so dividends already paid are lost — another reason to file the request the week you discover the lapse, not the quarter after.
The Cour de cassation added a trap for the unwary that every late foreign creditor must respect: file the late declaration itself within the foreclosure-relief action’s own time limit, without waiting for the judge’s answer. The Court held that “si aucun texte n’oblige le créancier défaillant à déclarer sa créance avant de saisir le juge-commissaire de sa demande de relevé de forclusion, il est néanmoins tenu de la déclarer dans le délai préfix de cette action, même s’il n’a pas été statué sur sa demande de relevé de forclusion à l’intérieur de ce délai” (Cass. com., 23 Apr. 2013, No. 11-25.963). In that case the creditors sought relief in July 2009 but declared only in March 2010, after the relief was granted — too late, and their claim was declared inadmissible with no remand. The procedure is therefore double-barrelled: petition the juge-commissaire for relevé de forclusion and lodge the declaration itself within the action’s prefixed deadline, even while the petition is still pending. A lawyer’s letter requesting relief without an attached declaration is a malpractice-grade omission.
Finally, where admission turns on a genuinely disputed substance — the debtor denies the contract, alleges defective delivery, or invokes set-off — the juge-commissaire does not decide the merits. Under article L. 624-2 of the Commercial Code, the judge “constate soit qu’une instance est en cours, soit que la contestation ne relève pas de sa compétence”, and the parties litigate the substance before the competent court (the commercial court, or an arbitral tribunal where your clause so provides) while the declared amount waits. Coordinate counsel accordingly: the French admission track and any foreign arbitration on the merits must tell the same story with the same exhibits, because a merits defeat abroad will collapse the French admission.
Conclusion
A French customer’s insolvency does not erase a foreign supplier’s invoice — it converts it into a procedural asset that must be worked fast. Stop individual enforcement on day one, declare within the extended four-month window, revendicate identifiable goods or their unpaid resale price within three months, and contest any rejection or foreclosure with both barrels loaded. Each step has its own judge, its own deadline and its own proof standard, and the file rewards the creditor that moves first in French. Handled this way from abroad, even an unsecured foreign claim can recover goods in kind, capture a resale price ahead of the queue, or secure a full vote in the rescue plan instead of a silent write-off.