You delivered the goods, the French client signed the delivery slip, and then nothing. No payment on the due date, no reply to your reminders, and you are sitting in London, New York or Dubai wondering whether a 12,000 euro invoice justifies hiring a French lawyer and flying to Paris. For a foreign company doing business in France, this is one of the most common shocks of the French market: payment discipline is regulated by statute, not left to negotiation, and a fast court procedure exists precisely so that small and mid-size claims can be recovered without a full trial. The problem is that most foreign creditors do not use it, because they do not know what their invoice already earns them by operation of law, or because they assume that any French court action requires their physical presence.
This guide explains, in plain English and for a business reader, how an unpaid invoice between professionals works under French law when you operate from abroad. Every French acronym is explained on first use. The first part shows what the statute adds to your invoice automatically: late-payment penalties calculated on a European Central Bank rate, a flat 40 euro recovery fee, and possible additional compensation. It also shows what your invoice and your general terms must contain for those rights to be usable, and within which five-year time limit you must act. The second part turns the paperwork into money: the formal demand, the injunction-to-pay procedure called injonction de payer before the Paris courts, what happens if the debtor objects, and how the resulting order is enforced against French assets while you stay abroad. Each key rule is linked to its official source on Légifrance, the free public database of French law, or to a published decision of the Cour de cassation, the French supreme court for civil and commercial matters.
I. What French law adds to your unpaid invoice even if your contract says nothing
A. How late-payment penalties, the 40 euro fee and extra recovery costs work when your French client pays late
Between professionals, French law sets maximum payment periods that apply unless the parties agree otherwise within strict limits. The statute provides that, unless otherwise stipulated, the period for paying sums due cannot exceed thirty days after receipt of the goods or performance of the service, while an agreed period cannot exceed sixty days after the invoice date, with a possible forty-five days end-of-month arrangement expressly stipulated and not abusive. These ceilings sit in Article L441-10 of the Commercial Code (Code de commerce), which also carries the penalty regime described below. Note that this article is shown as subject to deferred repeal with an end date in 2027 following recent simplification legislation, but it remains the applicable text on the date of this article, and you should always check the version in force on your invoice date.
The most useful feature for a foreign creditor is that penalties run automatically. Your contract does not need a penalty clause for penalties to exist: the same Article L441-10 states that “Les pénalités de retard sont exigibles sans qu’un rappel soit nécessaire”, meaning late-payment penalties are due without any reminder being necessary. They start the day after the payment date shown on the invoice. In practice, this means your first reminder letter does not create the right to penalties; it only documents a right that already exists, which changes the tone of every collection letter you send from abroad.
The rate itself is protective. Unless the parties agree otherwise, with a floor of three times the French legal interest rate, the statute provides that “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 interest rate applied by the European Central Bank (ECB) to its most recent refinancing operation plus ten percentage points, under Article L441-10 of the Commercial Code. The applicable ECB rate is the one in force on 1 January for the first half of the year and on 1 July for the second half. With ECB refinancing rates around 2 to 4 percent in recent years, the resulting French penalty rate typically lands between 12 and 14 percent per year, far above ordinary bank rates. On a 50,000 euro invoice paid six months late, that difference alone can represent roughly 3,000 euros of penalties, which is why computing them precisely matters before you negotiate any discount for prompt payment.
On top of penalties, every professional in late payment owes a flat recovery fee by operation of law. The statute states that any professional in a late-payment situation is automatically liable to the creditor for a flat compensation for recovery costs, fixed by decree, and Article D441-5 of the Commercial Code provides that “Le montant de l’indemnité forfaitaire pour frais de recouvrement prévue au II de l’article L. 441-10 est fixé à 40 euros”, meaning the flat recovery fee is set at 40 euros. Like penalties, it is due without reminder. And where your actual recovery costs exceed 40 euros, documented bailiff fees, lawyer fees for the demand, translation costs for a foreign creditor, the same Article L441-10 allows additional compensation on proof. The only statutory exception is collective insolvency: the creditor cannot claim these penalties and fees where safeguard, reorganisation or liquidation proceedings prohibit payment of the debt at maturity.
For a foreign company, the practical lesson is toailure-proof your claim early. State the penalty rate and the 40 euro fee on every invoice issued to a French client, keep proof of delivery or performance, and diary the due date plus one day as the starting point of penalties. If the debtor later proposes to pay the principal only, you know exactly what you are waiving: months of ECB-plus-ten interest and at least 40 euros, plus any justified extra costs. Judges in Paris see these calculations every day, and a creditor who presents them cleanly from the first letter is taken more seriously than one who discovers them at the hearing.
B. What your French invoice and general terms must contain, and the five-year deadline to act
Penalties and fees only help if your invoice is valid under French law, because the injunction judge will read it first. Article L441-9 of the Commercial Code requires every purchase of products or provision of services for a professional activity to be invoiced, with the seller obliged to issue the invoice upon delivery or performance and the buyer obliged to claim it. The invoice must show the names and addresses of both parties, the date of the sale or service, quantity, precise description, unit price excluding VAT, any price reduction acquired at that date, the date by which payment must be made, the discount terms for early payment, the penalty rate due from the day after the payment date, and the amount of the flat recovery fee due in case of late payment. It must also mention the purchase-order number where the buyer previously issued one. Failure to comply exposes the seller to an administrative fine of up to 75,000 euros for an individual and 375,000 euros for a company, doubled on repeat offending within two years, under the same Article L441-9. For a foreign supplier, the message is operational: use a France-compliant invoice template from the first sale, not a home-country template that omits the penalty rate and the 40 euro mention, because the missing line weakens your file even though the statute grants the rights automatically.
Behind the invoice stand your general terms, known in France as CGV (conditions générales de vente, general conditions of sale). Article L441-1 of the Commercial Code provides that general terms include payment conditions and the components used to determine the price, and that any producer, distributor or service provider who establishes them must communicate them to any professional buyer who requests them, on a durable medium, with the possibility of differentiating by buyer category. Once established, they form the single foundation of the commercial negotiation, although the parties may agree special terms that are not subject to that communication duty. A foreign company should therefore maintain a short English-French CGV set that states the payment deadline, the ECB-plus-ten penalty rate, the 40 euro fee plus proven extra costs, retention of title where relevant, and the competent court clause, and it should be able to prove communication to the French buyer: a signed order form referring to the CGV, an email attaching them before the order, or an online acceptance log. Paris judges routinely set aside penalty claims when the creditor cannot show which terms the debtor accepted, so this paper trail is as valuable as the invoice itself.
Proof of the underlying obligation matters as much as its amount. In commercial matters French courts accept invoices corroborated by consistent documents: signed order, delivery note, timesheets or acceptance email, and the absence of timely protest by the debtor. Keep every exchange in which the French client acknowledged receipt without disputing quantity or quality, because silence after delivery followed by payment discussions is the classic pattern judges rely on. Conversely, if the client protested defects promptly, expect the injunction judge to decline and send you to a full hearing where an expert assessment may be ordered. Knowing which situation you are in before filing saves months.
Finally, diarize prescription, the French time limit for bringing the claim. Commercial payment obligations between businesses are subject to a five-year limitation under Article L110-4 of the Commercial Code, which provides that obligations arising in the course of trade between traders, or between traders and non-traders, are time-barred after five years unless a shorter special period applies. The general civil baseline says the same in different words: Article 2224 of the Civil Code (Code civil) states 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”, meaning personal and movable actions are time-barred after five years from the day the holder knew or should have known the facts allowing exercise of the right. The decisions consulted for this article do not fix a special starting point for recurring penalty accruals beyond these texts, so the prudent course is to treat each unpaid invoice as carrying its own five-year clock running from its due date, and to interrupt it in good time by a formal demand served by a commissaire de justice (the merged French profession of bailiff and judicial officer, formerly huissier de justice), by the injunction application itself, or by court proceedings.
For founders planning their French subsidiary or branch, this section connects directly to the broader setup logic described in our formation guide covering company formation in France for foreign founders, from bank account and Kbis to VAT and first hire: compliant invoicing templates, communicated CGV and a limitations diary are part of the legal calendar of every French company from day one, just like approving accounts and filing tax returns. A foreign parent that imposes these three documents on its French team rarely needs this article; one that does not will need it within eighteen months.
II. How to turn the unpaid invoice into a French enforceable order while you live abroad
A. From the formal demand to the injunction-to-pay filing in Paris: where to apply, what to attach, and the one-month opposition deadline
Do not start with the court. Start with a mise en demeure, the formal demand to pay that French practice expects before any collection proceedings. Send it by registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt, in French, recalling each invoice number, principal, penalties computed to date at the ECB-plus-ten rate, the 40 euro fee per invoice, and a final deadline of eight to fifteen days. For a foreign creditor, serve a copy by email to the operational contact as well, because the registered letter proves dispatch while the email often produces the reply you will use as evidence. If the debtor is in Paris or the Île-de-France region, which covers Paris and the seven surrounding departments, having a Paris commissaire de justice serve the demand by personal act adds weight: it is the same officer who will later serve the court order, it creates an indisputable date, and it signals that enforcement will follow in the debtor’s own jurisdiction.
If the demand fails, the injonction de payer is the procedure designed for exactly your situation: a contractual claim for a fixed amount. Article 1405 of the Code of Civil Procedure (Code de procédure civile) provides that collection may use this procedure where “La créance a une cause contractuelle ou résulte d’une obligation de caractère statutaire et s’élève à un montant déterminé”, meaning the claim has a contractual cause or results from a statutory obligation and amounts to a determined sum, with contractual determination made under the contract terms including any penalty clause. Unpaid invoices with interest and the 40 euro fee fit squarely. The application is filed unilaterally, without summoning the debtor, which is why it is fast: the judge rules on your papers alone.
Jurisdiction follows the debtor, not the creditor, so your residence abroad changes nothing to the filing. Article 1406 of the Code of Civil Procedure directs the application to the judge for protection disputes or to the president of the judicial court (tribunal judiciaire) or the commercial court (tribunal de commerce), within their subject-matter jurisdiction, and makes the territorially competent judge the one of the place where the debtor, or one of the debtors, resides, with these rules being a matter of public policy so that any contrary clause is deemed unwritten and the judge must raise lack of jurisdiction on his own motion. In practice, a claim against a company domiciled in Paris goes to the Paris commercial court for a commercial invoice, or to the Paris judicial court where the debtor is not a trader. For the Paris and Île-de-France area, this means: identify the debtor’s registered office (siège social) from the national company register, confirm its SIREN number (the nine-digit identifier of every French business entity, extended by a five-digit NIC into the fourteen-digit SIRET identifying each establishment), and file where that office sits. Chambers in other departments follow the same rule, so a debtor in Boulogne-Billancourt, Nanterre or Bobigny is pursued in the court of its own department, with Paris counsel able to handle the filing remotely.
Your file must prove a liquid, contractual claim. Attach the compliant invoices, the accepted order or contract, delivery or performance proofs, the CGV communicated to the debtor, the computation of penalties and fees, and the unsuccessful demand. Courts reject applications that bundle disputed extras, unquantified damages or claims against multiple debtors on different contracts into one request; keep the injunction file to the invoices that are documented and undisputed, and pursue the rest separately. The judge either issues the payment order or rejects the application, and rejection does not prevent you from suing through the ordinary route with a summons, which is why a narrow, clean injunction file is never wasted work.
Service of the order triggers the debtor’s only window to resist. The serving act must, on pain of nullity, summon the debtor either to pay the fixed sum plus interest and clerk fees or, if it has defences, to file opposition, with the effect that opposition brings the whole dispute before the court, and it must display prominently the opposition deadline, the court and the procedure, plus a warning that without opposition no further recourse remains and forced payment may follow, under Article 1413 of the Code of Civil Procedure, which states that opposition has the effect described as “celle-ci ayant pour effet de saisir le tribunal de la demande initiale du créancier et de l’ensemble du litige”, meaning it seizes the court of the creditor’s initial claim and of the entire dispute. The deadline itself is one month from service: Article 1416 of the Code of Civil Procedure provides that “L’opposition est formée dans le mois qui suit la signification de l’ordonnance”, meaning opposition is filed within the month following service of the order. Where service was not made personally, the same Article 1416 extends receivability until one month after the first act served personally or, failing that, after the first enforcement measure making the debtor’s assets wholly or partly unavailable. The decisions consulted for this article do not recognise any other extension of that one-month period, so treat the served deadline as absolute and monitor service through your commissaire de justice rather than waiting for the debtor to confirm receipt.
B. After the order: making it enforceable, getting paid from abroad, and what the debtor’s opposition really changes
If no opposition arrives within the month, the order still needs its enforcement stamp to become a weapon. The clerk keeps the order and the application as the original, and on acceptance hands the creditor a certified copy bearing the enforcement formula and returns the supporting documents, under Article 1410 of the Code of Civil Procedure. Have your commissaire de justice collect or receive that enforceable copy (grosse), verify that principal, penalties, the 40 euro fee per invoice and clerk costs are all stated, and serve it with a command to pay. Only a creditor holding an enforceable title recording a liquid and due claim may pursue forced execution against the debtor’s assets, as Article L111-2 of the Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures (Code des procédures civiles d’exécution) provides. From London or New York, you do everything through powers of attorney and scanned identities: no hearing, no travel, no consular legalisation for most EU, UK and US creditors instructing French counsel, with enforcement costs advanced and added to the debtor’s bill where the statute allows, including the proven extra recovery costs above 40 euros already mentioned.
Enforcement in Paris and the Île-de-France region follows the assets. Bank-account seizure (saisie-attribution), seizure of receivables owed by the debtor’s own clients, and seizure and sale of tangible goods are available once the enforceable order is served, and the debtor’s bank will disclose the seized balance within days. Practical Paris points: serve the large Paris banks through their designated seizure departments to avoid returns, check the debtor’s SIRET establishments to locate stock or equipment, and ask the commissaire de justice to verify whether the debtor has already published insolvency difficulties, because opening of safeguard or liquidation proceedings freezes individual enforcement and sends you to the liabilities schedule instead. A foreign creditor that discovers the debtor is insolvent at this stage has not wasted the injunction: the enforceable order is precisely the document the insolvency claims officer (mandataire judiciaire) expects for admission of the claim, penalties included up to the opening date.
If the debtor does file opposition, the procedure changes nature but your work is not lost. Opposition seizes the court of the full dispute, the case proceeds as an ordinary lawsuit with summons, evidence and hearing, and your injunction file becomes your trial bundle. Two published rulings of the Cour de cassation show how strictly judges handle the opposition deadline, which is good news for a diligent creditor. In a decision of 24 October 2024, pourvoi No. 22-15.682, available at Cour de cassation, 2nd civil chamber, 24 October 2024, the Court held that “le point de départ de l’opposition à une ordonnance portant injonction de payer qui n’a pas été signifiée à personne est, en cas d’intervention d’un créancier à une procédure de saisie des rémunérations, la date de notification de l’intervention au débiteur”, meaning the starting point for opposition to a payment order not served personally is, where the creditor intervenes in wage-garnishment proceedings, the date the intervention is notified to the debtor. The lower court had run the clock from an internal letter between officers instead of that notification, and the ruling was quashed: for creditors, the lesson is to ensure every enforcement step is properly notified, because only notified acts start the debtor’s clock, and for debtors, informal knowledge of the order does not replace service.
The second ruling protects creditors against purely formal challenges. In a decision of 18 January 2024, pourvoi No. 21-23.033, available at Cour de cassation, 2nd civil chamber, 18 January 2024, the Court held that “l’opposition à une injonction de payer, même irrégulière, qui saisit le tribunal de la demande initiale du créancier et de l’ensemble du litige, interrompt le délai d’opposition”, meaning opposition to a payment order, even if irregular, which seizes the court of the creditor’s initial claim and the whole dispute, interrupts the opposition time limit, with regularisation possible until the judge rules. Combined with the civil rule that a claim brought even before the wrong court or annulled for procedural defect still interrupts limitation and foreclosure periods, this means an imperfect opposition filed by the debtor keeps the case alive rather than killing your claim on a technicality. For a foreign company, the operational point is reassuring: insist on proper service going out, keep copies of everything served, and let the debtor’s procedural objections play out before the seized court instead of panicking at the first challenge.
Two financial refinements close the picture. First, capitalisation of interest, the French anatocisme, allows yearly interest to bear interest itself where agreed or ordered: Article 1343-2 of the Civil Code provides that accrued interest due for at least a full year produces interest where the contract so provides or a court decision specifies. Ask for it expressly in your application and again at any opposition hearing for debts running over a year. Second, any court award of compensation carries legal interest from judgment unless the judge decides otherwise, under Article 1231-7 of the Civil Code. Neither rule replaces the ECB-plus-ten penalties, which remain the higher rate for the pre-judgment period; they stack after judgment under the judge’s control, which is another reason to present a clean computation table rather than a single lump sum.
Running all of this from abroad is routine for Paris practices. Counsel files the injunction application electronically, the commissaire de justice serves and enforces, translations are handled where the debtor requires them, and funds are wired to your foreign account with a full statement of principal, penalties, fees and enforcement costs for your auditors. The only moments that genuinely require your input are the initial evidence pack, the decision to accept or refuse a settlement that waives part of the penalties, and instructions if opposition opens a full trial. Everything else is procedure, and French collection procedure is built for creditors who never set foot in the courtroom.
Conclusion
An unpaid French invoice is not a polite request; it is a statutory asset. From the day after the payment date, it earns ECB-plus-ten penalties without reminder under Article L441-10 of the Commercial Code, plus a 40 euro flat fee per late payment under Article D441-5, plus proven extra recovery costs, provided the invoice carries the mandatory mentions of Article L441-9 and the general terms were communicated under Article L441-1. Act within the five-year limitation of Articles L110-4 and 2224, send a documented formal demand, then convert the file into an injonction de payer under Article 1405 before the commercial or judicial court of the debtor’s domicile under Article 1406. Serve strictly under Article 1413, count the one-month opposition period of Article 1416 from proper service only, collect the enforceable copy under Article 1410, and enforce under Article L111-2 through a commissaire de justice while you remain abroad. If the debtor objects, the court hears the whole case, and the Cour de cassation polices the deadline strictly in both directions, as the October 2024 and January 2024 rulings show. Prepare the invoice properly, compute the accessories precisely, serve everything formally, and the French system does the rest.