You are based in London, New York, Berlin or Dubai, and your company has delivered goods or performed services for a French customer. The invoice is 30, 60 or 90 days overdue, reminders go unanswered, and the French debtor suddenly disputes the quality of the delivery or claims never to have received the invoice. From abroad, the French recovery system looks closed: forms in French, a greffe (the registry of the commercial court) you have never visited, and a procedure with a Latin-sounding name, the injonction de payer (the French order-for-payment procedure). French law in fact gives the foreign supplier the same weapons as a local one, and most unpaid business invoices are recovered without a full trial, provided the file is built correctly from the start.
This article is written for foreign companies selling to France, whether or not they have a French subsidiary. It explains the French vocabulary as it goes: the mise en demeure (the formal demand letter that starts the clock), the Kbis (the official company identity certificate), the SIREN (the unique company identification number), the Registre du commerce et des sociétés (RCS, the trade and companies register), the commissaire de justice (the enforcement officer, formerly called huissier de justice), the Tribunal numérique (the online filing portal for the commercial courts), and the BODACC (the official gazette publishing company and insolvency notices). Every step below can be handled from abroad through French counsel with a power of attorney: your lawyer drafts the demand, files the petition, and instructs the enforcement officer, while you supply the contracts, delivery proofs and account statements.
Part I explains how to turn an unpaid French invoice into a court order: building an enforceable file, getting the injonction de payer, and defeating the debtor’s opposition within its one-month deadline. Part II explains how to enforce the order and secure your future French sales: seizing assets in France, using the European payment order against debtors elsewhere in the European Union, and drafting retention-of-title and penalty clauses that make the next invoice pay itself. Each step gives the exact rule, the controlling court language, and the practical move from abroad.
I. How to turn an unpaid French invoice into a court order from abroad
A. How to build an enforceable file before going to court from abroad
The recovery starts long before any judge sees the file, and the invoice itself is the first exhibit. French commercial law requires the invoice to state the date on which payment falls due, and the courts take that date literally: it fixes both when the debt becomes payable and when the limitation period starts running. The Commercial Chamber of the Court of Cassation confirmed this in a cross-border dispute between a French seller and Lithuanian buyers on 14 June 2023, holding that “« due date : 19.04.13 », la créance du vendeur était exigible à compter de cette date” and that the appeal court had therefore “a légalement fixé le point de départ du délai de prescription à cette date”. For a foreign supplier, the lesson is concrete: every invoice to a French customer must show a clear payment date, the purchase order or contract reference, the exact description of the goods or services, and proof of delivery or performance stapled to it. A file where the due date is missing or contradictory is the most common reason a payment-order petition fails.
The second building block is the formal demand, the mise en demeure de payer. Send it by registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt, or by the electronic equivalent your counsel uses, recapping the invoice numbers, the amounts, the due dates, and a final deadline, typically eight to fifteen days. This letter matters for three reasons: it evidences seriousness, it is the document the judge will read first, and it crystallises the starting point for late-payment interest. From abroad, have your French lawyer send it on firm letterhead; a demand signed by Paris counsel gets answered far more often than another email from the sales department.
The third block is money the law adds to your claim automatically. French law caps payment periods strictly: “Le délai convenu entre les parties pour régler les sommes dues ne peut dépasser soixante jours après la date d’émission de la facture.” Unless your contract states otherwise within that ceiling, the default period is thirty days after receipt of the goods or performance of the service. Once the deadline shown on the invoice passes, penalties accrue by operation of law: “Les pénalités de retard sont exigibles sans qu’un rappel soit nécessaire.” The rate, unless otherwise agreed and never below three times the legal interest rate, “est égal au taux d’intérêt appliqué par la Banque centrale européenne à son opération de refinancement la plus récente majoré de 10 points de pourcentage”. On top of interest, “Tout professionnel en situation de retard de paiement est de plein droit débiteur, à l’égard du créancier, d’une indemnité forfaitaire pour frais de recouvrement, dont le montant est fixé par décret.” A foreign creditor should therefore claim three layers in the demand letter: the principal, the contractual or statutory late interest running from the day after the due date, and the flat recovery fee, plus any documented collection costs above that flat amount. Debtors who ignored the principal sometimes pay once they see interest at the European Central Bank rate plus ten points ticking daily.
Gather the proof bundle before filing: the signed contract or accepted quotation with your general terms, the delivery slips or acceptance reports, the unpaid invoices with their due dates, the account statement showing the balance, the reminder emails, and the formal demand with its receipt. If your general terms contain a retention-of-title clause or a jurisdiction clause, flag them for counsel now; they shape enforcement later. Translate only what the judge needs, and keep the originals: French commercial judges are used to English-language contracts between international businesses, and your lawyer will summarise the key clauses in the petition.
B. How to get the French payment order and defeat the debtor’s opposition from abroad
The injonction de payer is the workhorse of French business debt recovery: a fast, largely paper-based procedure in which the president of the commercial court (or the judicial court for non-commercial debts) issues an order to pay without hearing the debtor first. The gateway condition is narrow and must be quoted exactly, because petitions are rejected when the claim does not fit it: “Le recouvrement d’une créance peut être demandé suivant la procédure d’injonction de payer lorsque : 1° La créance a une cause contractuelle ou résulte d’une obligation de caractère statutaire et s’élève à un montant déterminé”. An unpaid invoice for delivered goods or performed services arising from a contract, with a fixed amount, is the textbook case. File the petition (requête) with the greffe of the court of the debtor’s registered office, increasingly through the Tribunal numérique dematerialised channel described on the official entreprendre.service-public.fr guide to judicial recovery by payment order in France and in Europe, attaching the proof bundle. Your Paris counsel signs and files everything; no travel is required and no hearing takes place at this stage.
If the file is in order, the judge issues the order (ordonnance portant injonction de payer), which the commissaire de justice then serves on the debtor. Service is the decisive moment, so instruct counsel to use a reliable enforcement officer and to verify the debtor’s current registered address on the RCS beforehand; service at an outdated address is the main source of later annulment arguments. The official guidance states the rule in plain English: the debtor may contest the order within one month of service, is warned that silence closes every further challenge, and the supporting documents filed by the creditor are available to the debtor at the registry and through the Mespièces.fr platform.
The statute sets the opposition deadline in terms a foreign creditor must diary with care: “L’opposition est formée dans le mois qui suit la signification de l’ordonnance. Toutefois, si la signification n’a pas été faite à personne, l’opposition est recevable jusqu’à l’expiration du délai d’un mois suivant le premier acte signifié à personne ou, à défaut, suivant la première mesure d’exécution ayant pour effet de rendre indisponibles en tout ou partie les biens du débiteur.” The Court of Cassation applies this text strictly. On 24 October 2024 the Second Civil Chamber quashed an appeal decision for misapplying it, recalling that “l’opposition est formée dans le mois qui suit la signification de l’ordonnance” and that the extended admission period runs only from the first document actually served on the person or the first freezing enforcement measure. Practically, this means a debtor served personally who lets the month pass loses the fast-track challenge for good, while a debtor who was never served personally keeps a longer window. Ask your enforcement officer for the return of service (procès-verbal de signification) immediately and compute the deadline from the service date shown on it.
When no opposition arrives within the month, ask the court to add the enforcement formula (formule exécutoire); the order then becomes an enforceable title equivalent to a judgment, and Part II below explains how to seize with it. When the debtor does oppose in time, there is no reason to panic: the opposition is suspensive, meaning the order cannot be enforced yet, but the case simply continues as an ordinary lawsuit before the court that issued the order, with a full hearing where your delivery proofs decide the outcome. Opposition filed only to gain time, without any serious dispute on the delivery or the amount, regularly ends in a judgment confirming the debt plus interest and costs.
Two parallel tools deserve a place in the strategy. First, the summary application for interim payment, the référé-provision before the president of the commercial court: “Dans les cas où l’existence de l’obligation n’est pas sérieusement contestable, il peut accorder une provision au créancier, ou ordonner l’exécution de l’obligation même s’il s’agit d’une obligation de faire.” Where the debtor raises only vague complaints after months of silence, a référé-provision can produce an enforceable advance within weeks. Second, remember that going to court protects you against time running out: “la demande en justice, même en référé, interrompt le délai de prescription ainsi que le délai de forclusion”, as the Second Civil Chamber restated on 18 January 2024 when it quashed an appeal ruling in a payment-order case. Filing the petition or the summary writ therefore also stops the limitation clock, which matters for old invoices approaching the five-year commercial cut-off discussed in Part II.
II. How to enforce the order and secure your future French sales from abroad
A. How to enforce against a French debtor and use the European order from abroad
An enforceable payment order is only paper until assets are seized, and France provides a full enforcement toolkit operated by the commissaire de justice: attachment of bank balances (saisie-attribution), seizure and sale of tangible goods (saisie-vente), attachment of debts owed to the debtor by third parties, and, for real estate, the longer forced-sale procedure. Your counsel starts with an asset investigation: the enforcement officer can obtain the debtor’s bank account details through the official bank-account register procedure, identify the employer or customers for third-party attachment, and check the land registry for property. Move quickly after the enforcement formula is granted, because a debtor who has just lost the opposition phase sometimes empties accounts within days. From abroad, you approve the enforcement plan and the cost advances by email; the officer serves the seizures in France and holds the recovered funds for transfer to your account.
Time limits frame the whole enforcement phase. Commercial claims are extinguished after five years: “Les obligations nées à l’occasion de leur commerce entre commerçants ou entre commerçants et non-commerçants se prescrivent par cinq ans si elles ne sont pas soumises à des prescriptions spéciales plus courtes.” Combined with the 14 June 2023 ruling above, this means the five years run from the payment date shown on your own invoice, so diarying each invoice’s fifth anniversary is part of basic credit management. Enforcement measures and court applications interrupt the period, which is why the 18 January 2024 reminder that even a summary writ interrupts limitation is so useful for ageing receivables: file before the anniversary, not after.
When the debtor is not in France but in another European Union Member State, the European order for payment under Regulation (EC) No 1896/2006 is the cross-border twin of the French procedure, and the official entreprendre.service-public.fr guide confirms it may be used when the debtor is domiciled in another EU State with the exception of Denmark. The French creditor files once, the order circulates, and, absent opposition under Article 18 of the Regulation, it is declared enforceable in the State of origin. The French courts then treat that foreign enforceable order with full respect: on 27 June 2019 the Second Civil Chamber rejected a French debtor’s attempt to have the French enforcement judge annul service of a Dutch European order, holding that “une injonction de payer européenne, devenue exécutoire dans l’État membre d’origine, est reconnue et exécutée dans les autres États membres sans qu’il soit possible de contester sa reconnaissance”. The message for foreign groups is symmetrical: a European order obtained in your home EU State against a French customer enforces in France without re-litigating recognition, and a European order obtained in France enforces abroad the same way. Choose the filing State with counsel based on where the debtor’s assets actually sit.
Insolvency of the French debtor changes the game and must be checked before spending on enforcement. Search the BODACC and the RCS for safeguard, judicial reorganisation or liquidation proceedings; once a collective procedure opens, individual seizures are frozen and the claim must be declared to the liabilities (déclaration de créance) within the statutory deadline. This check costs little and avoids throwing good enforcement money after a frozen estate. Where the debtor is merely slow rather than insolvent, calibrated pressure works: a seizure of a bank balance on a Friday morning concentrates minds far better than a third reminder email.
B. How to draft the next contract so the invoice enforces itself from abroad
The cheapest recovery is the one you never have to file, and three clauses do most of the work. First, shorten the payment period in writing within the legal ceiling: thirty days by default, up to sixty days from the invoice date by agreement, or forty-five days end-of-month where expressly stipulated and not manifestly abusive toward the creditor. State the exact due date on every invoice, because that date triggers both the automatic penalties and the five-year limitation start confirmed by the 14 June 2023 decision. Second, reproduce the penalty machinery in your general terms: interest at the European Central Bank refinancing rate plus ten points from the day after the due date without reminder, plus the flat recovery fee fixed by decree and a reservation of additional documented collection costs. Debtors sign these terms without reading them and discover their price when the demand letter computes them.
Third, insert a retention-of-title clause (clause de réserve de propriété) for sales of goods: you remain owner until full payment, which lets you reclaim the goods themselves if the customer collapses. French law makes this clause powerful even in insolvency, and the Commercial Chamber drew its full consequence on 9 December 2020 by holding that “le droit de propriété du bien retenu à titre de garantie par l’effet d’une clause de réserve de propriété se reporte sur la créance du débiteur à l’égard du sous-acquéreur”, backed by the statute providing that “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.” In plain terms, if your French customer resold your unpaid goods before going bust, your ownership follows the resale price and you can claim that price ahead of unsecured creditors. The clause must be agreed in writing before delivery, ideally in the signed order confirmation, not merely printed on the back of the invoice after the fact.
Add two administrative reflexes to the sales process. Verify each new French customer on the RCS and the INPI Guichet unique records: check the Kbis, the share capital actually paid, the identity of the legal representative, and any insolvency or security entries. For larger exposures, ask for a first-order bank transfer or a parent-company guarantee rather than sixty-day terms with an unknown buyer. For the wider journey of running the French operation that issues these invoices, from registration and bank account to VAT and payroll, see our pillar guide for setting up a company in France as a foreign founder.
Conclusion
A foreign company facing an unpaid French invoice holds a clear path that runs entirely from abroad. Put the payment date on every invoice, because that date starts both the automatic penalties and the five-year limitation period the Court of Cassation enforces to the letter. Send a lawyer-signed formal demand claiming principal, interest at the European Central Bank rate plus ten points, and the flat recovery fee. File the injonction de payer where the claim is contractual and fixed in amount, diary the one-month opposition period from the service return, and treat opposition as the start of the lawsuit rather than its end, with the référé-provision available where the debt is not seriously disputable. Once the order carries the enforcement formula, seize bank balances and receivables through the commissaire de justice before the money moves, use the European order where the debtor sits in another Member State, and check the BODACC before spending against an insolvent estate. Then make the next sale safer than the last: shorter contractual deadlines, written penalty terms, and a retention-of-title clause signed before delivery so that ownership follows the goods or their resale price. Distance changes none of this; method decides everything, and the creditor who writes, dates, files and seizes on time recovers, wherever its head office sits.
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