You arrive at your flat in Paris after a year abroad, the key turns but the door is chained from the inside, and a stranger tells you through the gap that he lives there now. Or your neighbour in the Luberon calls to say that lights are on in the holiday house that should be empty until spring. For a foreign owner, discovering that someone occupies a French property without permission is a shock, and the first instinct, changing the locks or cutting the power, is exactly what French law forbids. Only a court order or the administrative removal procedure can lawfully recover the premises, and acting alone exposes you to criminal liability. The good news is that since the statute of 27 July 2023, France has one of the fastest squat-removal systems in Europe: a reasoned decision of the préfet (the State representative in the département) within forty-eight hours, followed by police evacuation, alongside the traditional emergency court route and substantial occupancy damages. This guide explains, for non-resident owners, who legally counts as a squatter, the two removal routes step by step, and how the courts compensate you, as clarified by five recent rulings of the Court of Cassation.

The starting point is ownership itself. Article 544 of the Civil Code provides that « La propriété est le droit de jouir et disposer des choses de la manière la plus absolue, pourvu qu’on n’en fasse pas un usage prohibé par les lois ou par les règlements. » In plain English: ownership is the absolute right to use and dispose of your property within the limits of the law. And Article 545 of the Civil Code adds that « Nul ne peut être contraint de céder sa propriété, si ce n’est pour cause d’utilité publique, et moyennant une juste et préalable indemnité. » Nobody can be forced to give up property except for public utility with prior compensation. An occupant without right or title therefore infringes the very substance of ownership, and every removal procedure flows from that principle. But the principle does not authorise self-help: Article L411-1 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures states that « Sauf disposition spéciale, l’expulsion d’un immeuble ou d’un lieu habité ne peut être poursuivie qu’en vertu d’une décision de justice ou d’un procès-verbal de conciliation exécutoire et après signification d’un commandement d’avoir à libérer les locaux. » In English: except by special provision, eviction requires a court decision and a formal order to vacate served beforehand. Changing the locks yourself is not a shortcut; it is an offence.

I. Is the occupant legally a squatter? The definition decides everything

French law gives the word squatter a precise meaning, and the whole procedure depends on it. The accelerated removal route and the exemption from the winter truce apply only to genuine squats. Misdiagnosing the situation, treating a holdover tenant as a squatter, for example, sends you down a procedure the authorities will refuse and costs you months.

A. Break-in, threats or coercion: the criminal definition of squat

Squatting a dwelling means entering it by breaking in, by deception, by threats or by force, in order to occupy it without the owner’s permission. The criminal definition sits in Article 226-4 of the Criminal Code, which punishes « L’introduction dans le domicile d’autrui à l’aide de manoeuvres, menaces, voies de fait ou contrainte, hors les cas où la loi le permet, est puni de trois ans d’emprisonnement et de 45 000 euros d’amende. » In English: entering another person’s home by trickery, threats, physical force or coercion, except where the law allows it, carries three years’ imprisonment and a 45,000 euro fine, and remaining there afterwards carries the same penalties. Two points matter enormously for foreign owners. First, the penalties were doubled to their current level by the statute of 27 July 2023 protecting homes against unlawful occupation, which also rewrote the winter-truce rules discussed below. Second, the same article now expressly provides that any residential premises containing furniture belonging to the owner counts as that owner’s home, whether or not the owner actually lives there and whether it is a main or a secondary residence. A furnished Paris flat or a furnished holiday house in Provence therefore qualifies as your domicile (legally protected home) even if you spend most of the year in London, New York or Dubai, provided your furniture is in it. An empty, unfurnished shell awaiting renovation is harder to characterise, and the complaint should then stress every sign of effective occupation, insurance, utility contracts and taxed status as a dwelling.

A second scenario completes the picture: the guest of a furnished tourist rental who simply stays on. Booking a meublé de tourisme (furnished short-stay rental) for a week and refusing to leave when the stay ends is treated as squatting the dwelling, and the same two removal routes apply. The proof differs, the owner shows the booking, the registration number of the rental and the expired agreement, but the legal qualification is identical. By contrast, damage to the dwelling is a separate offence: degrading someone else’s home carries two years’ imprisonment and a 30,000 euro fine, and any breakage, graffiti or ripped-out fittings should be documented by the enforcement officer from the first visit, because it founds both a criminal complaint and a civil claim for repairs.

One Court of Cassation ruling sounds a necessary note of caution about the criminal route. On 3 June 2025, the Criminal Chamber quashed a conviction for violation of domicile in a case where a former owner, evicted after a court-ordered auction sale, twice forced her way back into the flat before the auction buyer had ever received the keys or set foot in it. The Court recalled the governing principle: « Seul constitue un domicile, au sens de ce texte, le lieu où une personne, qu’elle y habite ou non, a le droit de se dire chez elle, quels que soient le titre juridique de son occupation et l’affectation donnée aux locaux, ledit texte n’ayant pas pour objet de garantir d’une manière générale les propriétés immobilières contre une usurpation. » In English: only a place where a person is entitled to feel at home counts as a domicile, whatever the legal basis of occupation; the offence does not generally protect vacant buildings against trespass. Read the full ruling in Cass. crim., 3 June 2025, no. 23-81.916. Because the buyer had never taken possession, the re-entry could not be a violation of her domicile, and the conviction fell. The facts predated the July 2023 reform, and a furnished dwelling now qualifies more readily, but the lesson stands: frame the criminal complaint around a genuine home, your furnished flat or house, and run the administrative and civil routes in parallel rather than betting everything on the criminal courts.

B. Three occupants who look like squatters but are not

The official service-public.fr guidance, verified in August 2026, expressly excludes three situations from squat, and each follows a different procedure. First, the tenant who stays on after the lease ends without your agreement is not a squatter: a former tenant, even one who stopped paying long ago, entered lawfully under a lease, and removal runs through the ordinary unpaid-rent and eviction procedure for let property, not the squat routes. Second, a person you or your tenant took in, a relative, a partner, a friend, who then refuses to leave is not a squatter either; the occupant entered with permission, and the remedy is a civil action to recover the premises, often combined with an occupancy payment. Third, an unauthorised sub-tenant who remains after the sub-lease ends is in the same position: no break-in, no squat. For foreign owners these distinctions bite in two classic traps. A managing agent who installed “a caretaker” without a proper agreement can leave you with an authorised occupant rather than an intruder. And a tenant whose lease you thought had ended, because you sent an email instead of a formal notice, is still legally a tenant. Before choosing your procedure, establish precisely how the occupant entered: any initial permission, however informal, points away from the squat routes and toward the ordinary courts.

II. Two lawful routes to recover the property and make the occupant pay

Once the squat is confirmed, French law offers two removal routes that can be combined: the accelerated administrative procedure before the préfet, which can end with police evacuation within days, and the emergency court procedure, the référé (interim-relief proceedings), which adds an enforceable eviction order and money. A criminal complaint for unlawful entry runs alongside both and pressures the occupant to leave. None of these routes observes the winter truce: for squats, eviction can happen at any time of year, as explained below.

A. The préfet route: a removal decision within forty-eight hours

The administrative route, created for dwellings entered by force or trickery, is the fastest way to physically recover the property, and it costs nothing in court fees. It unfolds in four documented steps, and each step conditions the next, so prepare the file before you start.

First, file a criminal complaint. Go to the local commissariat (police station) or gendarmerie with your passport, your title deed (acte de vente) and anything proving the break-in: photographs of the forced door, the neighbour’s account, the caretaker’s statement. Ask expressly that the complaint record unlawful entry into your home, since that qualification opens the administrative route. Owners living abroad can have a lawyer or a trusted person file with a written authority, but the complaint itself is indispensable: without it, the préfet will not act.

Second, prove that the property is yours and that it is squatted. Ownership is shown by the title deed, recent property-tax bills (avis de taxe foncière), utility invoices and home-insurance schedules in your name. If you cannot reach your papers because they are inside the occupied flat, the préfet must, within seventy-two hours, ask the tax administration to confirm who owns the dwelling, so even a stripped file does not block you. The squat itself must be formally recorded: a judicial police officer, the mayor, or a commissaire de justice (court enforcement officer, formerly called a bailiff) comes to the address and certifies that the dwelling was entered by trickery, threats, force or coercion and that the occupants remain without permission. For an owner in another country, instructing a local commissaire de justice to draw up this report, a procès-verbal de constat (sworn factual report), is the single most useful expense of the whole affair: it fixes the date of the squat, describes the forced entry, and, where possible, identifies at least one occupant by name, letterbox or statement, which simplifies everything downstream.

Third, apply to the préfet of the département where the property sits for a mise en demeure (formal order to leave) against the squatters. A lawyer can draft the request, but it is your file, complaint receipt, proof of ownership, occupation report, that does the work. The préfet must decide within forty-eight hours of receiving the request, taking into account the personal and family situation of the occupants, and any refusal must be reasoned in writing, which gives you something to challenge. If granted, the order tells the squatters to leave within at least twenty-four hours where a home is squatted, or at least seven days in other cases. It is notified to the occupants, displayed at the town hall and on the building, and sent to you.

Fourth, the police remove. If the squatters have not left when the deadline expires, the préfet must have the dwelling evacuated by the police without delay, unless you have objected. There is no negotiation phase and no additional court application. In practice, owners should stay reachable, keep the enforcement officer’s telephone number, and arrange for the locks to be changed and the property secured immediately after evacuation, because a dwelling left open can be re-squatted within days, and a second procedure is never faster than prevention. Photograph every room before and after, with the officer present: the inventory of damage founds the damages claim addressed in the next section.

For Paris and Île-de-France owners, three practical points deserve emphasis. Complaints are filed at the commissariat of the arrondissement where the flat sits, and inner-suburb communes each have their own préfet, so address the request to the right office from the start; a misdirected application restarts the forty-eight-hour clock. Second, many Paris squats affect pied-à-terre flats whose owners visit twice a year: ask your building’s gardien (caretaker) or a neighbour to alert you at the first sign, and keep a set of ownership documents outside the flat, with your lawyer or in your country of residence, so the file can be assembled without entering the premises. Third, furnished tourist rentals, common in Paris, follow the holdover variant noted above: keep the platform booking records, the registration number displayed on the listing, and the expired rental terms, since those three documents are exactly what the authorities ask for.

The préfet route recovers the walls; it does not by itself award money. Occupancy payments, repair costs and legal expenses require the court route, to which we now turn.

B. The court route: emergency eviction, occupancy damages and criminal conviction

The court route centres on the référé before the interim-relief judge of the local tribunal judiciaire (ordinary civil court), and it is the only route that converts the squat into money. Your lawyer applies for three things at once: the occupants’ eviction, a provision toward the indemnité d’occupation (payment for unlawful occupation), and, where the facts support it, referral of the criminal complaint. The legal engine is Article 835 of the Code of Civil Procedure, which provides that the judge may « même en présence d’une contestation sérieuse, prescrire en référé les mesures conservatoires ou de remise en état qui s’imposent, soit pour prévenir un dommage imminent, soit pour faire cesser un trouble manifestement illicite. » In English: even where the dispute is serious, the interim judge may order the protective or restorative measures needed to prevent imminent harm or stop a manifestly unlawful disturbance. Occupying another person’s home without right or title is the textbook example of such a disturbance, so the judge does not need to resolve who owns what in depth; your title deed plus the occupation report normally suffice, and defences about housing rights do not block eviction at the hearing stage.

Money follows the same emergency logic. The same article allows a provision wherever the debt is not seriously disputable, and on 9 January 2025 the Third Civil Chamber confirmed expressly that the interim judge may order eviction under penalty and award the owner a provision against the occupation payment due for occupation without right or title, limited only by the undisputed amount of the claim. The Court approved reasoning that « l’article 835 du code de procédure civile autorisait le président du tribunal judiciaire à allouer au propriétaire une provision à valoir sur l’indemnité due en raison de l’occupation sans droit ni titre de son bien qui n’a d’autre limite que le montant non sérieusement contestable de la créance alléguée. » In English: Article 835 authorises the court president to grant the owner a payment on account of the sum due for occupation of the property without right or title, capped only at the amount that cannot seriously be disputed. Read the full ruling in Cass. 3rd civ., 9 January 2025, no. 23-19.335. In that case, the former co-owner of a Paris-area flat, whose lots had been auctioned to a property company, was evicted under a daily penalty and ordered to pay occupation money running until the day he fully vacated and handed back the keys. For a foreign owner, the practical message is to claim the payment from the first day of occupation until the keys are actually returned, at the local rental value, and to support the amount with an agent’s rental estimate: judges fix the provision from evidence, not from assertion.

Even occupants who entered lawfully can become liable once their right ends. On 27 February 2025, the Third Civil Chamber upheld a provision ordering a seller who had stayed on after a precarious-occupation agreement expired to pay a daily flat-rate occupation payment agreed in the deed, confirming that from the day after expiry she occupied the building without right or title. Read the full ruling in Cass. 3rd civ., 27 February 2025, no. 23-19.824. The parallel with a tourist-rental guest who refuses to leave is direct: permission that has expired is no permission at all, and the meter starts running. Owners should therefore keep every agreement, booking and notice fixing the end of authorised occupation, because that date is the starting point of the money claim.

Two published rulings then close the door on the occupants’ favourite defence, the right to respect for home and family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. On 4 July 2019, in a widely noted section ruling, the Third Civil Chamber held that « Mais attendu que, l’expulsion étant la seule mesure de nature à permettre au propriétaire de recouvrer la plénitude de son droit sur le bien occupé illicitement, l’ingérence qui en résulte dans le droit au respect du domicile de l’occupant, protégé par l’article 8 de la Convention de sauvegarde des droits de l’homme et des libertés fondamentales, ne saurait être disproportionnée eu égard à la gravité de l’atteinte portée au droit de propriété ; qu’ayant retenu à bon droit que, le droit de propriété ayant un caractère absolu, toute occupation sans droit ni titre du bien d’autrui constitue un trouble manifestement illicite permettant aux propriétaires d’obtenir en référé l’expulsion des occupants, la cour d’appel, qui n’était pas tenue de procéder à une recherche inopérante, a légalement justifié sa décision ; » In English: since eviction is the only measure capable of restoring the owner’s full rights over unlawfully occupied property, the resulting interference with the occupant’s Article 8 rights cannot be disproportionate given the gravity of the attack on property rights. Read the full ruling in Cass. 3rd civ., 4 July 2019, no. 18-17.119. And on 28 November 2019 the same chamber quashed an appeal ruling that had refused to order, even in interim proceedings, the eviction of occupants settled on communal land, on the visa of Articles 544 and 545 of the Civil Code: the lower court could not use Article 8 to leave the owner permanently dispossessed. Read the full ruling in Cass. 3rd civ., 28 November 2019, no. 17-22.810. Human-rights arguments may earn short delays from the enforcement judge, but they do not defeat eviction itself.

Enforcement follows a strict timetable that owners should diarise. Once the eviction judgment is served on the occupants by the commissaire de justice, they have one month to leave; if they remain, the officer serves a commandement de quitter les lieux (formal order to vacate), from which moment no further time extension can be granted to squatters, and the officer requests the préfet’s concours de la force publique (police assistance for enforcement). And the calendar holds no seasonal surprise: Article L412-6 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures suspends evictions each year from 1 November to 31 March, but expressly provides that « Par dérogation au premier alinéa du présent article, ce sursis ne s’applique pas lorsque la mesure d’expulsion a été prononcée en raison d’une introduction sans droit ni titre dans le domicile d’autrui à l’aide de manœuvres, de menaces, de voies de fait ou de contrainte. » In English: by exception, the stay does not apply where eviction was ordered following entry without right or title into another person’s home by trickery, threats, force or coercion. Squatters of a dwelling can therefore be removed in January as lawfully as in June; for other premises entered by force, the judge may lift the stay. Foreign owners who also hold property abroad should note how unusual this is: in France, the squat of a home simply has no winter protection.

Finally, the criminal complaint filed at the outset keeps working in the background. Unlawful entry carries up to three years’ imprisonment and a 45,000 euro fine, remaining afterwards carries the same, and damage to the dwelling adds up to two years and 30,000 euros, each of which can carry a civil claim for your losses within the criminal trial. Separately, Article 1240 of the Civil Code states that « Tout fait quelconque de l’homme, qui cause à autrui un dommage, oblige celui par la faute duquel il est arrivé à le réparer. » Any wrongful act causing damage must be repaired by the person at fault. Ripped-out kitchens, broken doors, unpaid utility bills run up during the occupation and the enforcement officer’s and lawyer’s fees documented by invoices all enter the claim. Notify your home insurer within the policy deadline as well: many French assurance habitation (home-insurance) policies cover legal-protection costs and vandalism, but late notification can void the cover, and an owner abroad who learns of the squat weeks late should declare it the day the news arrives. Owners structuring a wider French property strategy, from purchase to letting, can review each stage of the transaction on the firm’s French real estate law practice page.

Conclusion

A squatted property in France is recovered by procedure, never by force. Confirm first that the occupant truly entered without permission, since tenants, guests and sub-tenants follow different routes. Then move on two tracks at once: the complaint, the occupation report and the forty-eight-hour préfet application to get the walls back within days, and the emergency court application to obtain eviction under penalty plus an occupation payment running until the keys return. The July 2023 reform is on the owner’s side throughout: a furnished flat or house counts as a protected home, the winter truce does not apply, and the Court of Cassation has repeatedly held that evicting an unlawful occupant cannot disproportionately infringe housing rights. Keep title deeds and insurance outside the property, keep the enforcement officer’s number, and act the week you learn of the occupation: in squat cases, every documented day is eviction evidence and every undocumented day is lost money.