You run your business from London, Dubai, New York or Singapore, and your French client has stopped paying. The goods were delivered or the assignment was performed, the invoice is now weeks overdue, and every polite reminder disappears into silence. French law treats this situation as a commercial emergency in your favour: late-payment penalties run automatically, a flat recovery indemnity applies by operation of law, and a fast one-sided court procedure can turn your invoice into an enforceable title without you flying to France. This guide explains how to price the delay, how to send a formal demand that carries weight from abroad, how to obtain an injonction de payer (a French order to pay) or a European payment order, and how to force recovery through a commissaire de justice, the enforcement officer formerly known as the huissier de justice. Each step states the exact text that protects you, the deadline that can destroy your case, and the file you must build before anyone challenges you.

I. Price the Delay Before Going to Court: the French Arithmetic of Unpaid Invoices

A. How much does your French debtor owe you on top of the invoice: contractual penalties, ECB rate plus ten points and the 40-euro indemnity

Start with your contract and your general terms of sale, because French commercial law builds the penalty on top of what the parties agreed. Failing any clause to the contrary, the default payment period cannot exceed thirty days after receipt of the goods or performance of the service, while a period agreed between the parties cannot exceed sixty days after the invoice date, with a narrow derogation allowing forty-five days end of month where expressly stipulated and not manifestly abusive to the creditor. These ceilings sit in Article L. 441-10 of the French Commercial Code (Code de commerce), the provision that governs payment periods between professionals: Article L. 441-10, Code de commerce.

The same article fixes the penalty rate. Your terms of payment must state the conditions and the rate of the late penalties chargeable from the day after the payment date shown on the invoice, together with the amount of the flat recovery indemnity. Failing a contrary provision, which may never set a rate below three times the French legal interest rate, ce taux 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, meaning the rate equals the European Central Bank refinancing rate plus ten percentage points. The applicable rate is the one in force on 1 January for the first half of the year and the one in force on 1 July for the second half: Article L. 441-10, II, Code de commerce. Two features make this regime formidable for a foreign creditor. First, Les pénalités de retard sont exigibles sans qu’un rappel soit nécessaire, penalties are due with no reminder required. Second, 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, every professional in late payment automatically owes a flat recovery indemnity set by decree, and where your actual recovery costs exceed that flat sum you may claim a supplement with proof. The decree sets the figure without ambiguity: Le montant de l’indemnité forfaitaire pour frais de recouvrement prévue au II de l’article L. 441-10 est fixé à 40 euros (Article D. 441-5, Code de commerce).

Put numbers on it so the demand letter bites. Assume an invoice of 25,000 euros due on 1 September, still unpaid on 13 November, hence 73 days of delay, and assume for illustration a European Central Bank refinancing rate of 2.5 percent, giving a penalty rate of 12.5 percent. The penalties reach roughly 25,000 × 12.5% × 73/365, about 625 euros, plus the automatic 40-euro indemnity, plus any documented extra recovery costs, and the meter keeps running every day until payment. State in the letter that the rate follows the half-yearly European Central Bank reference, so the debtor understands the figure moves against him twice a year.

Three traps limit this arithmetic, and each is written in the texts. First, you cannot stack the commercial penalties on top of ordinary moratory interest. The Commercial Chamber of the Court of Cassation held on 24 April 2024, appeal No. 22-24.275, that la pénalité de retard prévue à l’article L. 441-6, I, alinéa 8, du code de commerce, devenu L. 441-10, II, du même code, constitue un intérêt moratoire et que, ayant la même nature, elle ne se cumule pas avec les intérêts légaux de retard au sens de l’article 1153, alinéas 1 et 2, et de l’article 1231-6 du code civil: the commercial late penalty is moratory interest by nature and does not cumulate with statutory moratory interest (Cass. com., 24 April 2024, No. 22-24.275). Claim the commercial penalties, which at the European Central Bank rate plus ten points almost always beat the legal rate, and drop any parallel claim for ordinary interest on the same period. Second, if your contract contains a fixed penalty clause (clause pénale), the judge may revise it on his own motion: le juge peut, même d’office, modérer ou augmenter la pénalité ainsi convenue si elle est manifestement excessive ou dérisoire (Article 1231-5, Civil Code). Keep contractual penalties proportionate to the real risk instead of drafting figures a judge will cut down. Third, the penalties and the indemnity fall away where collective insolvency proceedings forbid payment at due date: the creditor cannot claim them once a safeguard, restructuring or liquidation proceeding blocks payment of the claim. Check solvency before spending on enforcement, a point developed below.

Your invoice itself must carry the building blocks, because without them the machinery jams. Every purchase of products or provision of services for a professional activity must be invoiced, the seller delivering the invoice upon supply or performance: Tout achat de produits ou toute prestation de service pour une activité professionnelle fait l’objet d’une facturation (Article L. 441-9, Code de commerce). In practice the invoice must show the payment date or period, the penalty rate, and the 40-euro indemnity; a foreign supplier whose French-law invoice omits them still recovers the principal, but spends months arguing about accessories that a compliant invoice would have made automatic. If you set up your French billing from abroad, align invoicing, value-added-tax registration and bank details from the start, as explained in the companion guides on setting up a company in France as a foreign founder and French VAT registration and filing from abroad, and secure a usable company account early, a frequent pain point described in the guide on corporate bank account refusals and capital deposits from abroad.

B. How do you send a formal demand from abroad that counts: mise en demeure, evidence file and the five-year clock

The formal demand (mise en demeure) is the letter that converts commercial pressure into legal effects. Under ordinary civil law, damages for late payment of a sum of money consist of interest at the legal rate running from the formal demand: Les dommages et intérêts dus à raison du retard dans le paiement d’une obligation de somme d’argent consistent dans l’intérêt au taux légal, à compter de la mise en demeure (Article 1231-6, Civil Code). Since the 2024 ruling above forbids cumulating that interest with the commercial penalties, the demand letter of a professional creditor should invoke the Article L. 441-10 penalties as the primary basis and mention statutory interest only as the fallback if the commercial regime were ever held inapplicable, never both for the same days.

From abroad, form matters as much as substance. Send the demand by registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt (lettre recommandée avec accusé de réception) to the debtor’s registered office as shown on its Kbis, the official company identity certificate issued by the greffe, the registry of the commercial court. Keep the postal receipts and the acknowledgment, or the returned unclaimed envelope, because service attempts prove seriousness and fix dates. For larger claims, instruct a commissaire de justice in the debtor’s area to serve a formal demand (sommation de payer); service by an enforcement officer is harder to ignore and its date is indisputable. State the exact principal per invoice with numbers and dates, the contractual or statutory payment term, the penalty rate with its European Central Bank reference and half-year, the running total of penalties, the 40-euro indemnity per invoice, and a final deadline of eight to fifteen days before court action. Write in French or bilingually where the debtor is French-speaking, keep every earlier reminder, and never threaten measures you will not take.

Build simultaneously the file that survives an opposition, because the fast procedure below collapses if the debtor raises a real dispute about performance. Assemble the signed contract or accepted quotation, purchase orders, delivery slips (bons de livraison) or acceptance reports (procès-verbaux de réception), timesheets or connection logs for services, the emails where the debtor acknowledged receipt without reservation, the invoices with proof of sending, and your bank statements showing non-payment. Where the debtor already complains about quality or delay, gather your replies and any cure performed: a judge who senses an excuse will still grant time, and a debtor who can document a genuine defect will defeat a one-sided order and push you into a full trial.

Watch the clock while negotiating. Commercial obligations between traders, or between a trader and a non-trader, are subject to 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 (Article L. 110-4, Code de commerce). Polite commercial exchanges do not stop it; going to court does, since La demande en justice, même en référé, interrompt le délai de prescription ainsi que le délai de forclusion, a court claim, even in urgent proceedings, interrupts prescription (Article 2241, Civil Code). A creditor living abroad should therefore never let settlement talks drift past the fourth year without filing. Parallel to prescription, monitor solvency: search the debtor on the BODACC, the official gazette publishing insolvency openings, and consider a credit report, because suing an insolvent company for penalties the statute withdraws during collective proceedings wastes the enforcement budget.

Expect one judicial safety valve even with a perfect file. The judge may, considering the debtor’s situation and the creditor’s needs, defer or spread payment within a limit of two years: Le juge peut, compte tenu de la situation du débiteur et en considération des besoins du créancier, reporter ou échelonner, dans la limite de deux années, le paiement des sommes dues (Article 1343-5, Civil Code). These grace periods (délais de grâce) suspend enforcement once granted and can reduce the interest on deferred instalments. They are discretionary, reasoned and capped, so a documented foreign creditor who refused any schedule before suing is better placed to oppose them than one who never proposed anything.

II. Turn the Invoice Into an Enforceable Title Without Flying to France

A. How do you get a French order to pay quickly: the injonction de payer, its one-month opposition trap and the road to a full trial

The injonction de payer is the workhorse of French business debt recovery: a non-adversarial application (requête) on paper, decided without a hearing, producing an order that becomes enforceable if the debtor stays silent. The official service-public guidance describes it as the quick route to a titre exécutoire, the enforceable title allowing forced recovery, and details who may apply, including companies through a representative, and the cost and service steps (service-public.fr, debt recovery: injonction de payer). Eligibility is statutory: 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 ; en matière contractuelle, la détermination est faite en vertu des stipulations du contrat y compris, le cas échéant, la clause pénale (Article 1405, Code of Civil Procedure). An unpaid commercial invoice with its penalties and indemnity fits squarely, provided the amount is fixed and evidenced rather than merely estimated.

Jurisdiction follows the debtor, not the creditor, which is good news for enforcement. The application goes, depending on the nature of the claim, before the protection-litigation judge or the president of the judicial court (tribunal judiciaire) or of the commercial court (tribunal de commerce), within each court’s subject-matter jurisdiction, and Le juge territorialement compétent est celui du lieu où demeure le ou l’un des débiteurs poursuivis, the court of the debtor’s domicile, with these jurisdictional rules being a matter of public policy (Article 1406, Code of Civil Procedure). A foreign company therefore sues its Paris-based client before the Paris courts, its Lyon client before the Lyon courts, and the resulting title is born where the debtor’s assets usually are. File through French counsel: the requête sets out the parties, the breakdown of principal, penalties and indemnity, the legal basis, and the supporting documents listed in the previous section. The judge rules on the papers, may grant all or part, and issues the order (ordonnance); there is no hearing at this stage and no need for the creditor’s director to attend.

Service and opposition form the decisive sequence. A commissaire de justice serves the order on the debtor, and the debtor has one month from service to file an opposition (opposition): l’opposition est formée dans le mois qui suit la signification de l’ordonnance, as restated by the Second Civil Chamber on 24 October 2024, appeal No. 22-15.682, which further details the extended starting point where service was not made personally (Cass. civ. 2nd, 24 October 2024, No. 22-15.682). If no opposition arrives within the month, the creditor asks the court to add the enforcement formula (formule exécutoire) and holds a title enforceable like a judgment. If the debtor opposes, even briefly and without reasons, the case automatically continues as an ordinary adversarial trial before the competent court, where both sides exchange arguments and the judge decides after hearing them, with the possibility of grace periods and costs orders. This is why the evidence file described above must be trial-ready from day one: an injonction de payer against a debtor who genuinely contests performance is only the first round.

From abroad, organise representation once and let it run. Grant your French lawyer a written authority covering the requête, any opposition proceedings, settlement discussions and enforcement instructions, so no new signature travels across borders at each stage. Provide certified English-to-French translations of the key contract pages where the debtor is French and the contract is in English, keep an updated statement of the running penalties with the half-yearly rate, and fix a settlement floor in advance: many debtors pay or settle within days of service by the commissaire de justice, and a mandate with a clear walk-away figure lets counsel capture that moment without waking you at night. Where the debtor sits in Paris or the Paris region, the commercial court of Paris and the surrounding enforcement offices handle these flows daily, which shortens service and seizure logistics without changing the procedure.

B. What if the debtor is outside France or owns nothing visible: European payment order, seizure of bank accounts and the insolvent-debtor fallback

Cross-border claims inside the European Union have their own lane. The French Code of Civil Procedure contains a dedicated section for it: La présente section est relative à la procédure européenne d’injonction de payer prévue par le règlement (CE) n° 1896/2006 du Parlement européen et du Conseil du 12 décembre 2006 instituant une procédure européenne d’injonction de payer (Article 1424-1, Code of Civil Procedure), and the official business guidance sets the three entry conditions: a contractual origin, a certain, liquid and due claim, and parties in different Member States (service-public.fr, European debt recovery; Regulation (EC) No. 1896/2006). In practice, a supplier based in France or elsewhere in the Union claiming against a French business debtor, or a foreign company suing across Union borders, asks counsel to compare the domestic injonction de payer with the European order on three criteria: where the debtor’s assets actually sit, which court moves faster on the file as assembled, and how the resulting title will circulate for enforcement. Do not file both in parallel on the same claim without advice; coordinate so the two tracks cannot produce conflicting titles.

Once any order becomes enforceable, recovery turns physical through the commissaire de justice. The enforcement principle is short: 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, the creditor holding an enforceable title for a liquid and due claim may pursue forced execution against the debtor’s property (Article L. 111-2, Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures). The flagship measure is the third-party holding seizure (saisie-attribution) served on the debtor’s bank, which freezes and then allocates the account balance up to the claim; next come seizures of tangible assets and, against persistent debtors, seizure of receivables owed by the debtor’s own clients. From abroad you advance the officer’s costs, supply the enforceable title with its service records, the debtor’s bank details where known, the Kbis of both companies, and a power of attorney; the officer then serves, freezes and distributes within the statutory timetable, and reports sums recovered with an account of costs, part of which the court can shift to the debtor.

Prepare the fallback before you need it. If the BODACC search reveals safeguard, restructuring or judicial liquidation, individual enforcement stops and the weapon becomes the lodging of the claim (déclaration de créance) with the insolvency representative within the statutory deadline from publication, covering principal, accrued penalties up to the opening date, and the indemnity. Miss that deadline and the claim is forfeited against the proceedings; meet it with the same invoice file and the penalties freeze at opening while awaiting distribution. If the debtor is merely silent but solvent, sequence the pressure instead: demand letter, injonction de payer, enforcement formula, bank seizure, and only then consider the full trial route or a negotiated schedule secured by a bank guarantee (garantie bancaire) or a first-demand guarantee (garantie à première demande). Each step from abroad runs through the same two local arms, your lawyer for the court and your commissaire de justice for service and seizure, which is exactly how foreign creditors recover in France without relocating the dispute to their home country.

Conclusion

A French unpaid invoice is not a polite request awaiting goodwill; it is a claim that prices itself from the day after the payment date, at the European Central Bank rate plus ten points with an automatic 40-euro indemnity per invoice, and it converts through a paper application into an order the debtor must oppose within one month of service or face seizure of his bank accounts. The foreign creditor who wins is the one who invoices correctly under Articles L. 441-9 and L. 441-10, sends a dated formal demand invoking the commercial penalties rather than cumulating them with ordinary interest, files before the five-year prescription of Article L. 110-4 with a trial-ready bundle of contracts, delivery proofs and bank statements, and instructs a lawyer and a commissaire de justice at the debtor’s domicile to carry the order from requête to recovery. Check solvency on the BODACC first, choose between the domestic and the European order on where the assets sit, expect a possible two-year grace schedule as the only lawful brake, and move as soon as the final deadline in the demand letter expires. Distance from France changes none of the tools; it only requires that the file be complete before the first step, because a complete file gets paid and an incomplete one gets opposed.