You sued in London and won. The county court or the High Court ordered your former business partner, your ex-tenant or your debtor to pay you tens of thousands of pounds, plus interest and costs. Then you discover that the money, the bank account and the holiday flat are in France, and your debtor has stopped answering your solicitor’s letters. Before Brexit, the answer was routine: a European regulation carried your English judgment across the Channel almost automatically. That world ended at 11pm on 31 December 2020. An English judgment is today a foreign judgment in France, and a foreign judgment from outside the European Union has no direct effect here. As the official service-public.fr guide on enforcing a foreign civil judgment in France explains, a decision given outside the European Union does not apply directly in France and must go through an exequatur procedure, the court process by which a French judge authorises enforcement of a foreign decision. Every French term in this guide is explained the first time it appears.

The short answer is that you must ask a French court to declare your English judgment enforceable on French soil, then hand that order to a French enforcement officer who can freeze and seize. Since 1 July 2025 a new treaty route, the Hague Judgments Convention of 2019, sits alongside the classic court application, but only for qualifying cases started after that date. The French judge checks three things and only three things: that the English court was properly connected to the dispute, that nothing in the judgment offends French international public policy, and that there was no fraud. If you are on the receiving end — a commissaire de justice (the enforcement officer, formerly called huissier de justice) has served you with an English judgment to be enforced in France — the same three checkpoints are your shield, plus strict procedural defences before the enforcement judge. This guide works through both sides with the exact statutory wording, a May 2025 Court of Cassation ruling you can check online, Paris practice, and the documents to prepare before you spend a euro on costs.

I. Can your English judgment still be enforced in France after Brexit?

A. Why the automatic European route closed, and the two doors that remain open

Start with what disappeared, because many British creditors still rely on outdated advice. Until the end of the transition period, Regulation Brussels Ia (Regulation (EU) No 1215/2012 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters) allowed an English money judgment to be enforced in France with a simple certificate and no review of the substance. The British government confirms in its official guidance for legal professionals on cross-border cases that the exit regulations revoked the Brussels Ia Regulation and its predecessors as they applied in the UK, and ended the effect of the Lugano Convention 2007 and the EU-Denmark Agreement in the UK. In plain terms: since 1 January 2021, no European shortcut carries a fresh English judgment into France. Anything begun before the cut-off under the old rules keeps its old regime; everything new must use one of the two doors described below. Check the date your English proceedings started before you choose, because the wrong door wastes months.

The first door, and for most readers the only one, is the classic French exequatur under ordinary private international law (droit commun, the default French rules applied where no treaty or European text governs). Article 509 of the Code de procédure civile (the French code of civil procedure) states the foundation word for word: “Les jugements rendus par les tribunaux étrangers et les actes reçus par les officiers étrangers sont exécutoires sur le territoire de la République de la manière et dans les cas prévus par la loi” (judgments given by foreign courts are enforceable on the territory of the Republic in the manner and in the cases provided for by law). For a post-Brexit English judgment there is no bilateral enforcement treaty and no European regulation, so the manner provided for by law is the judge-made three-condition test explained in part I.B. below, applied by the tribunal judiciaire (the ordinary first-level civil court) on a writ of summons. Do not let anyone tell you that Brexit made English judgments worthless in France: it made them foreign judgments like American or Australian ones, enforceable after verification, which is a longer road but a perfectly usable one.

The second door opened on 1 July 2025. The Hague Conference on Private International Law records that the Convention of 2 July 2019 on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Civil or Commercial Matters (2019 Judgments Convention) entered into force for the United Kingdom on 1 July 2025, after the deposit of its ratification instrument on 27 June 2024. France is bound through the European Union’s own accession, in force since 1 September 2023 for the Union’s Member States except Denmark. In qualifying civil and commercial cases where the proceedings began after the Convention became effective between the two states, recognition follows the treaty’s streamlined conditions rather than the full classic review. Two warnings matter. First, the treaty has sharp edges: employment, family, insolvency, defamation and several other matters are excluded, so a London employment tribunal award or a divorce costs order will normally still travel through the classic door. Second, French court practice on the new text is young, and the clerk or even the judge may be meeting it for the first time; plead both routes in the alternative where you qualify, with the classic exequatur as your safety net. A related but narrower treaty, the Hague Convention of 2005 on choice-of-court agreements, continues to protect exclusive English jurisdiction clauses: the British guidance notes that domestic legislation gave domestic legal effect to the 2005 Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements from the end of the transition period, so a contract sending disputes to London keeps a treaty backbone even where the 2019 text does not apply.

Practical consequences follow immediately. Budget for translation: the French court will want a certified French translation of the English judgment, the certificate of finality and the underlying contract or invoices, by a translator on the official court list (traducteur assermenté, the sworn translator authorised for court use). Budget for time: Paris currently takes several months from writ to judgment on an uncontested file, longer if the debtor fights. And preserve your leverage now: if French assets might vanish while you litigate in London or prepare the French case, French law lets a creditor whose claim appears well founded in principle ask the judge for protective measures before any enforceable title exists, as part II.A. explains. Readers in Paris and the Île-de-France should note that the competent court is the tribunal judiciaire of the debtor’s domicile or where enforcement will occur — in practice, the Paris court for debtors living in the capital — and that Parisian enforcement officers know the London-documents routine well, which speeds service but never excuses a defective file.

B. The three checks the French judge applies before declaring your judgment enforceable

The heart of the classic route is a ruling of the First Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation (Cour de cassation, France’s supreme court for civil matters) given on 7 May 2025, appeal No. 23-18.558, published with the official reference ECLI:FR:CCASS:2025:C100305. The court restates the test word for word: “Pour accorder l’exequatur, le juge français doit, en l’absence de convention internationale et en dehors du champ d’application des règlements européens, s’assurer que trois conditions sont remplies, à savoir la compétence indirecte du juge étranger, fondée sur le rattachement du litige au juge saisi, la conformité à l’ordre public international de fond et de procédure ainsi que l’absence de fraude” (to grant exequatur, the French judge must, where there is no international convention and outside the scope of the European regulations, satisfy himself that three conditions are met: the indirect jurisdiction of the foreign court, based on the connection between the dispute and the court seised, conformity with substantive and procedural international public policy, and the absence of fraud). That sentence is the whole examination. The judge never re-tries the merits: a French court will not ask whether the English judge interpreted the contract correctly. It asks only whether the English court was entitled to hear the case, whether the outcome shocks French fundamental principles, and whether the judgment was obtained honestly. Frame your entire file around those three questions and you speak the judge’s language.

The first condition, indirect jurisdiction (compétence indirecte, the French review of whether the foreign court had an acceptable link to the case), is usually the easiest for an English judgment. A contract performed in England, a debtor domiciled in England when proceedings began, or a valid clause giving jurisdiction to the London courts all show the required connection (rattachement, the linking factor between the dispute and the court). The trap is the mirror-image situation: where the dispute was really French — a Paris flat, French parties, performance in France — and the English proceedings look like a forum chosen to escape French mandatory rules, the French judge may find the connection too thin. Exclusive French jurisdiction also blocks the road: some disputes, such as rights in French land or certain company-registry matters, belong to French courts alone, and a foreign judgment trespassing on them will be refused. Before filing, map the connecting factors honestly and plead them in the writ; a judge who sees the links set out clearly grants faster than one left to reconstruct them.

The second condition, conformity with international public policy (ordre public international, the core French principles that no foreign decision may breach), covers both substance and procedure. On substance, a judgment ordering something French law fundamentally rejects — for example punitive damages calibrated to punish rather than to compensate, or interest piling up at a rate French law treats as abusive — faces refusal in whole or in part. Ordinary English compensatory damages, contractual interest at market rates and costs orders pass without difficulty. On procedure, the question is whether the debtor was genuinely able to defend himself: proper service of the claim, time to respond, an impartial tribunal, and respect for the rights of the defence (droits de la défense, the French name for due-process rights). A default judgment (jugement par défaut, a decision given because the defendant did not appear) is not automatically doomed — English default judgments are enforced every month — but you must prove the absent debtor was duly served and informed, with the certificate of service and translations to show for it. If service went to an old address while you knew the debtor lived in Lyon, expect the judge to refuse, and rightly so.

The third condition, absence of fraud (absence de fraude, the requirement that the judgment was not engineered dishonestly), reaches further than many solicitors assume. The May 2025 ruling stresses that review of the absence of fraud goes beyond evasion of the applicable law alone: hiding decisive facts from the foreign judge, manufacturing jurisdiction artificially, or pursuing abroad what a French judgment had already settled can all amount to fraud. In that very case, a litigant who concealed from the German court a French divorce settlement that already covered the same pension rights lost the exequatur because the concealment misled the foreign judge and produced a double recovery. The lesson for British applicants is blunt: disclose the full litigation history in your French file, including any French proceedings between the same parties, and never present a selective bundle. For targets, the lesson is the reverse: dig out everything the English court was never told, because a proven concealment that steered the outcome is one of the strongest refusal grounds in the books.

Procedure matters as much as substance. Outside European instruments, the application goes to the tribunal judiciaire by writ of summons (assignation, the formal document by which an enforcement officer summons the opponent before the court) or joint petition, and representation by a French lawyer (avocat, the regulated legal profession entitled to plead) is required at first instance and compulsory on any appeal. The official service-public.fr guide confirms the route in plain terms: you must bring the case before the tribunal judiciaire by summons or joint petition, and you may appeal an exequatur decision, with a lawyer compulsory before the court of appeal. Assemble the file as the judge will read it: the sealed English judgment with proof it is final and enforceable in England, the contract and invoices behind it, proof of service on the debtor, a sworn translation of each exhibit, and a short memorandum mapping each document onto the three conditions. An appeal lies against the decision, so a refusal is never the end of the road — but a well-built first file is cheaper than any appeal.

II. From the French enforcement order to money recovered, and how to fight back if you are the target

A. How to turn the exequatur into a seizure of French bank accounts, wages and property

Winning the exequatur judgment changes the legal nature of your claim. Article L. 111-3 of the Code des procédures civiles d’exécution (the French enforcement code) lists what counts as an enforcement title (titre exécutoire, the official document authorising forced execution), and its second paragraph covers your case word for word: “Les actes et les jugements étrangers ainsi que les sentences arbitrales déclarés exécutoires par une décision non susceptible d’un recours suspensif d’exécution, sans préjudice des dispositions du droit de l’Union européenne applicables” (foreign acts and judgments, and arbitral awards, declared enforceable by a decision not open to an appeal that suspends enforcement, without prejudice to the applicable provisions of European Union law). From that moment the English debt becomes a French enforcement title, and the full machinery of French forced execution opens. Article L. 111-2 of the same code states the rule word for word: “Le créancier muni d’un titre exécutoire constatant une créance liquide et exigible peut en poursuivre l’exécution forcée sur les biens de son débiteur dans les conditions propres à chaque mesure d’exécution” (a creditor holding an enforcement title recording a liquidated and due claim may pursue forced execution against the debtor’s assets under the conditions specific to each enforcement measure). Three words do heavy work there: the sum must be quantified (liquide) and due (exigible), so unassessed damages or a conditional English order may need a further English step first; and each seizure method has its own formalities, which is why you instruct a local enforcement officer rather than improvising.

Only that officer may act. Article L. 122-1 of the enforcement code provides word for word: “Seuls peuvent procéder à l’exécution forcée et aux saisies conservatoires les huissiers de justice chargés de l’exécution” (only the judicial officers entrusted with enforcement may carry out forced execution and protective seizures). The statute still says huissiers de justice; since the reform creating the single profession, these officers are the commissaires de justice, and the service-public.fr guide itself describes the summons as the act of the commissaire de justice, formerly the bailiff’s writ. The general principle is stated in Article L. 111-1, word for word: “Tout créancier peut, dans les conditions prévues par la loi, contraindre son débiteur défaillant à exécuter ses obligations à son égard” (any creditor may, under the conditions laid down by law, compel a defaulting debtor to perform his obligations towards him). The same article adds the boundary, again word for word: “L’exécution forcée et les mesures conservatoires ne sont pas applicables aux personnes qui bénéficient d’une immunité d’exécution” (forced execution and protective measures do not apply to persons enjoying immunity from execution) — verify the debtor’s status before spending costs against an embassy account or state-owned property used for sovereign purposes.

The workhorse measure is the third-party attachment (saisie-attribution, the seizure of the debtor’s money claims in the hands of a third party, typically a bank). Article L. 211-1 of the enforcement code provides word for word: “Tout créancier muni d’un titre exécutoire constatant une créance liquide et exigible peut, pour en obtenir le paiement, saisir entre les mains d’un tiers les créances de son débiteur portant sur une somme d’argent” (any creditor holding an enforcement title recording a liquidated and due claim may, to obtain payment, attach in the hands of a third party the debtor’s claims relating to a sum of money). In practice the officer serves the attachment on the debtor’s French bank, which must freeze the credit balance on the day up to the amount claimed, then pays over after the one-month challenge period if the debtor stays silent. Attachments of earnings (saisie des rémunérations, the monthly deduction from wages) follow special scales protecting a minimum income and require court allocation, while seizure and sale of land (saisie immobilière, the forced sale of real property through the court) is a heavy, slow, judge-supervised procedure reserved for substantial debts — use it against the Dordogne villa or the Paris studio only when bank balances will not cover the claim. Match the weapon to the asset: bank first, wages second, land last.

Two timing rules protect the diligent and punish the sleepy. First, you do not have to wait for the exequatur to secure assets. Article L. 511-1 of the enforcement code allows interim protection word for word: “Toute personne dont la créance paraît fondée en son principe peut solliciter du juge l’autorisation de pratiquer une mesure conservatoire sur les biens de son débiteur, sans commandement préalable, si elle justifie de circonstances susceptibles d’en menacer le recouvrement” (any person whose claim appears well founded in principle may ask the judge for authorisation to take a protective measure over the debtor’s property, without prior demand, if he shows circumstances likely to threaten recovery). An English judgment, even not yet declared enforceable, plus evidence of a French bank account being emptied or a flat quietly put up for sale, is exactly the file on which Paris judges grant protective attachments within days, sometimes without hearing the debtor first. Second, enforcement titles expire. Article L. 111-4 of the enforcement code states word for word: “L’exécution des titres exécutoires mentionnés aux 1° à 3° de l’article L. 111-3 ne peut être poursuivie que pendant dix ans, sauf si les actions en recouvrement des créances qui y sont constatées se prescrivent par un délai plus long” (execution of the enforcement titles listed in paragraphs 1 to 3 of Article L. 111-3 may be pursued for ten years only, unless the recovery actions for the claims recorded therein are subject to a longer limitation period). Calendar that ten-year limit from the French exequatur decision, and remember that the underlying English limitation rules may cut shorter — limitation is the silent killer of cross-Channel claims, so diary it on day one.

B. If a commissaire de justice serves you with an English judgment: how to challenge the exequatur and the seizure

Now reverse the view. You live in France, perhaps in Paris or the inner suburbs, and an enforcement officer hands you papers: a London judgment you dispute, or never properly heard about, is to be enforced against your French salary, your Livret A savings or your flat. Do not ignore the papers and do not assume the English decision is untouchable. French law gives the target two battlefields — against the declaration of enforceability itself, and against each enforcement measure — and the deadlines run fast, usually one month for seizures, so instruct a lawyer the week you are served, not the month after.

Against the exequatur itself, mirror the three conditions. Attack indirect jurisdiction where the English court’s link to the dispute was artificial: a consumer contract performed entirely in France, an insurance or employment dispute that mandatory rules reserve to the employee’s home court, or a clause you never validly accepted. Attack international public policy on procedure first, because it is the most fertile ground: an English default judgment served at a former London address while the claimant knew you lived in Boulogne-Billancourt, a claim form never translated although you do not read English, or a hearing listed without real notice all breach the rights of the defence as French courts understand them. Gather the envelopes, the bailiff’s certificates, your tenancy agreement and your travel records — the French judge decides on documents, not on recollection. On substance, test penalty clauses, eye-watering contractual interest and costs orders that look punitive: French courts have trimmed foreign awards that punish rather than compensate, and the judge may refuse or reduce that slice while enforcing the rest. Finally, test fraud in the broad sense the May 2025 ruling gives it: if the English claimant concealed from the London court a French judgment, a payment already made, or the decisive document, say so with exhibits, because misleading the foreign judge to obtain a double recovery is precisely what the Court of Cassation punished in appeal No. 23-18.558.

Against each seizure, go before the enforcement judge (juge de l’exécution, the specialist judge of the tribunal judiciaire who supervises all forced execution). Every seizure can be challenged within its own time limit: the third-party attachment gives you one month from service to contest before the judge, who can release the frozen sums wholly or partly, and the protective attachment obtained without prior title must be followed swiftly by proceedings to obtain one, failing which it lapses. Check the title itself: an exequatur decision still open to an appeal that suspends enforcement cannot found forced execution, because Article L. 111-3 admits foreign judgments only when “déclarés exécutoires par une décision non susceptible d’un recours suspensif d’exécution” (declared enforceable by a decision not open to an appeal suspending enforcement). Check the sums: unliquidated damages, sums not yet due, or interest computed beyond the English order are all contestable line by line. Check the calendar too: ordinary personal claims in France expire after five years — Article 2224 of the Code civil (the French civil code) provides word for word that “Les actions personnelles ou mobilières se prescrivent par cinq ans à compter du jour où le titulaire d’un droit a connu ou aurait dû connaître les faits lui permettant de l’exercer” (personal and movable actions are time-barred after five years from the day the holder of a right knew or should have known the facts enabling him to exercise it) — and while the ten-year enforcement period of Article L. 111-4 usually governs once exequatur is granted, limitation arguments belong in your file from the start, especially where the English claim itself is stale.

Negotiation deserves a paragraph because judges notice behaviour. A debtor who makes a reasoned payment proposal, discloses genuine means and respects a court-approved schedule is treated very differently from one who empties accounts the week after service — and obstructing enforcement can itself attract penalties and colour every later application, including any request for time to pay (délais de grâce, the grace periods of up to two years the enforcement judge may grant a debtor in difficulty). Conversely, a creditor who refuses any reasonable schedule while piling costs may find the judge less generous on costs and timing. For British readers in Paris and the Île-de-France, the practical circuit is compact: the enforcement judge sits at the Paris tribunal judiciaire on the Île de la Cité, most enforcement officers serving the capital are minutes away, and hearings on seizures move quickly — which cuts both ways, so arrive with bank statements, payslips, the English file and translations ready, not promised.

Conclusion

Brexit closed the automatic road but left two working ones. If you hold an English judgment and the assets are in France, identify the correct door — the classic exequatur in every case, the Hague 2019 treaty route in addition where your proceedings qualify — then build the file around the three questions the Court of Cassation asks: connection, public policy, honesty. Secure the assets early with protective measures where flight is feared, translate everything by a sworn translator, and calendar both the English limitation period and the French ten-year enforcement limit. If you are the target, answer fast: contest jurisdiction, service and sums on paper, challenge each seizure within its month, and negotiate from documented means rather than silence. Cross-Channel enforcement rewards the party whose file the French judge can verify in an afternoon — make yours that file.

Need a quick opinion on your case

Cross-Channel enforcement turns on dates, translations and the exact wording of your English order. Send our office your judgment and the French papers you received or plan to serve: a telephone consultation with a lawyer of the firm is available within 48 hours, first consultation billed at 80 EUR including VAT. Call 06 46 60 58 22 or write via our contact page with English judgment France in the subject line.