Order to vacate the premises: the landlord's enforcement timetable after the eviction judgment

Obtaining the eviction judgment is not the same as obtaining vacant possession. Between the pronouncement of the decision and the handover of the keys, an institutional landlord goes through a procedural sequence of several months, marked by steps each of which conditions the next: service of the enforceable title, order to vacate the premises (commandement de quitter les lieux), statutory waiting period, possible periods of grace, winter stay, requisition of police assistance. Each day lost translates into unrecovered occupation compensation and, in a commercial asset, into a loss of operability. This guide reconstructs the post-judgment chronology as a decision calendar: which act triggers which period, which period is fatal, and at what point the blockage becomes compensable by the State under Article L. 153-1 of the French Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures (code des procédures civiles d'exécution, CPCE).

The starting point: an enforceable title, served and properly drafted

Enforcement does not begin when the judgment is pronounced but when it is served. Article 503 of the French Code of Civil Procedure makes enforcement of a judgment subject to its prior notification to the person against whom it is relied on. As long as service has not been effected by a commissaire de justice (bailiff), no enforcement step is possible, and an order to vacate issued prematurely is vulnerable.

Since Decree No. 2019-1333 of 11 December 2019, provisional enforcement of first-instance decisions is automatic (Article 514 of the French Code of Civil Procedure), unless otherwise provided. In practical terms, an eviction judgment given by the judge for protection disputes (juge des contentieux de la protection) or by the judicial court (tribunal judiciaire) is enforceable notwithstanding appeal. The occupant retains two levers: an application to stop provisional enforcement before the First President or the delegated judge (Article 514-3 of the French Code of Civil Procedure), which requires a showing of manifestly excessive consequences and serious grounds for annulment, and an application for time to leave. The first neutralises the title; the second merely defers its enforcement.

The quality of the operative part determines how smoothly what follows runs. An operational operative part includes authorisation to evict the occupant and anyone occupying through the occupant, where appropriate with the assistance of the police and of a locksmith, the fixing of a monthly occupation compensation until the premises are actually vacated, and an order for costs including the cost of enforcement. The absence of a fixed occupation compensation in the title forces a second set of proceedings to quantify the loss of enjoyment, which adds several months to the recovery timetable.

The order to vacate the premises: the act that opens the timetable

Article L. 411-1 of the French Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures lays down a twofold condition for any eviction:

"Unless otherwise specially provided, the eviction of a building or of an inhabited place may be pursued only by virtue of a court decision or of an enforceable record of conciliation and after service of an order to vacate the premises."

The order to vacate the premises is therefore a mandatory precondition, not a courtesy formality. It is issued by a commissaire de justice at the landlord's request, and may be served in the same instrument as the service of the judgment: this time saving is systematically recommended where the title carries provisional enforcement and the chosen strategy is a rapid exit.

Article R. 411-1 of the same Code lists the particulars of the order, in particular the indication of the enforceable title by virtue of which the eviction is pursued, the designation of the court with jurisdiction to rule on an application for time, the date from which the premises must be vacated, and the warning concerning the fate of furniture left on the premises. These particulars are prescribed on pain of nullity: an irregular order gives the occupant an incident before the enforcement judge (juge de l'exécution), with the corresponding delaying effect. Drafting the instrument is not a secondary technical matter, it is the first point of fragility in the timetable.

Where the eviction concerns an inhabited place, Article L. 412-5 of the French Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures requires the commissaire de justice to inform the State representative in the département from the time of the order, by electronic transmission, so that the rehousing request can be taken into account. In practice this information determines how smoothly police assistance is later requisitioned: a prefectoral file already constituted and a social and financial assessment already carried out reduce the grounds for adjournment.

The two-month period: real scope and cases of reduction

Article L. 412-1 of the French Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures sets the principle of the two-month eviction period: where the eviction concerns a place inhabited by the person evicted or by anyone occupying through that person, it may take place only on expiry of a period of two months following the order.

The delimitation of the scope deserves the commercial landlord's attention. The two-month period is attached to the inhabited character of the premises, not to the nature of the lease. Purely commercial premises, a shop, a warehouse, an office floor, in which no one resides, do not fall within Article L. 412-1. The order to vacate remains mandatory under Article L. 411-1, but no statutory two-month waiting period applies: vacation of the premises may be required at short notice, the date being fixed in the instrument. The position is more complicated for mixed premises, a shop with an ancillary dwelling occupied by the tenant or its manager, for which the inhabited character of the premises revives the protection. Before any order is issued on a commercial asset, auditing the actual occupation, living areas, furniture, domiciliation, consumption, is a precondition for securing the position.

The judge may adjust this period. The judge may reduce or remove it in the cases provided for in Article L. 412-1, and the period does not apply where the judge ordering the eviction finds bad faith on the part of the person evicted or that the occupants entered the premises by means of manoeuvres, threats, assault or coercion. This last rule was consolidated by Law No. 2023-668 of 27 July 2023 aimed at protecting homes against unlawful occupation, which also introduced into the French Criminal Code an offence of fraudulent occupation of premises (Articles 315-1 et seq. of the French Criminal Code). Conversely, Article L. 412-2 allows the judge to extend the period, for no more than three months, where the eviction would have consequences of exceptional hardship. The application for reduction or removal must be made in the proceedings on the merits: it is harder to obtain from the enforcement judge once the title has been given. For the occupant without right or title, this point is decisive and ties in with the analysis developed in our study on the eviction of an occupant without right or title.

Periods of grace: the main source of uncertainty

Articles L. 412-3 and L. 412-4 of the French Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures govern periods of grace (délais de grâce). The judge may grant renewable periods to occupants of inhabited places or of premises for professional use whose eviction has been ordered by a court, whenever their rehousing cannot take place in normal conditions. The judge who orders the eviction may grant the same periods.

Three observations are called for as regards an institutional landlord.

First, the text is not limited to residential premises. The reference to premises for professional use opens a route to certain tenants, even though the exact scope of that notion remains debated and the courts construe strictly the condition of rehousing in normal conditions. A defaulting commercial tenant may therefore try to obtain a stay of enforcement, in particular where it relies on the continuation of an activity and the employment of staff. The landlord's answer is built on the absence of any prospect of payments resuming and on the fact that the consequences of the eviction are not abnormal.

Second, the benefit of the periods is closed to an occupant who entered the premises by means of manoeuvres, threats, assault or coercion, and to an occupant in bad faith. This exclusion, expressly provided for in Article L. 412-3, shapes the whole litigation strategy against unlawful occupations: the characterisation as assault, established from the summons onwards, deprives the occupant of the two-month period and of the periods of grace. The winter stay is excluded as of right where the eviction penalises entry into another person's home by such means; for any other place, the judge may remove or reduce it (Article L. 412-6).

Third, duration. The Law of 27 July 2023 narrowed the range in Article L. 412-4, which previously allowed periods of up to three years: the length of the periods may now be no less than one month and no more than one year. Checking the wording in force on the day of the application is a necessary reflex, the subject having been amended several times. The judge takes into account the occupant's good or bad will, its efforts to find other housing, its family and financial situation, but also the situation of the owner and the loss it suffers. On this last point, producing an up-to-date statement of the rent debt, a statement of the asset, a documented re-letting or works project carries more weight than an abstract argument about interference with the right of property.

A cash-flow point that is often overlooked: the grant of periods does not suspend the payability of the occupation compensation. The judge maintains it, and most often makes the continuation of the period conditional on its actual payment. Seeking this condition, together with automatic forfeiture of the period in the event of non-payment, is the main lever for limiting risk where the application for time appears likely to succeed. The fixing of this compensation, the precariousness discount and its recovery are detailed in our article on occupation compensation under a commercial lease.

The winter truce: what it blocks and what it lets through

Article L. 412-6 of the French Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures provides that any eviction measure not yet carried out is stayed from 1 November to 31 March of the following year. This stay, applied as of right, requires no application by the occupant and cannot be set aside at the judge's discretion outside the statutory exceptions.

The question of the winter truce (trêve hivernale) for commercial premises comes up repeatedly in commercial lease files. The text applies to occupants of residential premises: premises used exclusively for commercial, craft or industrial activity, and not inhabited, are not covered by the stay. An eviction from a shop or a warehouse can therefore be carried out in December or in February. Here again, the reservation concerns mixed premises and ancillary dwellings that are actually occupied: as soon as the premises are a place where people live, the stay regains its force, whatever the characterisation of the lease. The same reasoning applies to de facto occupation of professional premises converted into housing, a frequent situation in vacant assets awaiting repositioning.

The exceptions to the stay are strictly construed. The stay does not apply where the rehousing of those concerned is ensured in sufficient conditions respecting the unity and needs of the family, nor where the eviction was ordered because of entry without right or title into another person's home by means of manoeuvres, threats, assault or coercion. Where the occupants entered by these means any place other than the home, the judge may remove or reduce the benefit of the stay (Article L. 412-6).

For a landlord, the operational consequence is a calendar imperative: on a residential asset, an eviction that has not been physically carried out before 1 November is mechanically postponed to the spring, with five additional months of occupation compensation to be provisioned. Working back up the chain, this means that the order to vacate must be issued early enough for the two-month period, then the requisition of police assistance and its prefectoral processing, to fit into the useful window. Files begun at the end of summer on a residential asset are, in practice, spring files.

Moving to forced enforcement: attempt, report, requisition

On expiry of the period stated in the order, the commissaire de justice carries out the eviction. The enforcement constraints are those of ordinary law: no measure may be carried out before six in the morning or after nine in the evening, nor on Sundays and public holidays, except with the judge's authorisation (Article L. 141-1 of the French Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures). In the absence of the occupant or if the occupant refuses to open, the commissaire de justice may enter the premises only in the presence of the mayor of the municipality, a municipal councillor or a delegated municipal official, a police or gendarmerie authority, or two adult witnesses (Article L. 142-1).

Two outcomes are possible. Either the eviction is carried out, and an eviction report is drawn up, recording the inventory of furniture, its fate and, where applicable, the changing of the locks. Furniture left on the premises is then governed by Articles L. 433-1 and L. 433-2 of the French Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures: the occupant has a period in which to remove it, after which it may be sold at public auction or declared abandoned. Management of this aspect is rarely anticipated, even though it conditions the restoration of the asset and its re-letting time, particularly where the commercial premises contain stock, operating equipment or waste to be removed.

Or the eviction meets resistance and the commissaire de justice draws up a report of unsuccessful attempted eviction. This instrument is the key document for what follows: it opens the way to requisitioning police assistance (concours de la force publique). Articles R. 153-1 et seq. of the French Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures govern this requisition, addressed to the prefect, accompanied by a copy of the operative part of the enforceable title and, where applicable, of the report of attempted eviction. Silence kept for two months by the competent authority amounts to a decision of refusal. The compensation consequences of this refusal for the landlord are dealt with separately in our article on State compensation for refused police assistance.

This two-month period is the blind spot of most eviction timetables. Added to the two-month period of the order, it takes the theoretical minimum duration of a contested eviction, excluding periods of grace and the winter stay, well beyond what a reading of the judgment alone would suggest. An institutional landlord that builds its cash-flow plan on the date of the judgment alone is wrong by one or two quarters.

Refusal of police assistance: turning the blockage into a claim against the State

Where the prefect refuses assistance, expressly or by silence, the landlord is not without recourse. Article L. 153-1 CPCE states an obligation of result borne by the State:

"The State is bound to lend its assistance to the enforcement of judgments and other enforceable titles. The State's refusal to lend its assistance gives rise to a right to compensation."

This text, which comes from Law No. 91-650 of 9 July 1991 reforming civil enforcement procedures, enshrines long-standing administrative case law. Since the Couitéas judgment of 30 November 1923, the Conseil d'État has accepted that the administration may lawfully refuse to use police force where public-order considerations justify it, but that this refusal, lawful in principle, engages the State's liability without fault on the basis of the breach of equality before public burdens, provided the loss borne by the beneficiary of the title is abnormal and special.

Implementation calls for a method. The file rests on the enforceable title, the properly served order to vacate, the report of attempted eviction, the request for requisition of police assistance and proof of its date of receipt, then the decision of refusal or the lapse of the two-month period. The compensable loss corresponds mainly to loss of enjoyment, assessed by reference to the occupation compensation fixed by the title or to the market rental value, from the date on which the eviction should have been carried out, plus enforcement costs incurred in vain and, depending on the circumstances, damage suffered during the extended period of occupation. The administrative courts, on the other hand, exclude earlier claims, rent arrears arising before the request for assistance, which stem from the debtor's default and not from the State's refusal.

The procedural route is a prior compensation claim addressed to the prefect, before the matter is brought before the administrative court. The four-year limitation period of Law No. 68-1250 of 31 December 1968 on the limitation of claims against the State applies, which means a file blocked for several financial years must not be left to lie dormant. Our dedicated analysis of the refusal of police assistance details how the quantum is built and the claim strategy.

A point of substance for institutional creditors and landlords holding several assets: this compensation litigation should not be treated as a resigned epilogue, but as a component of the recovery model. Faced with an insolvent occupant, the solvent State becomes the useful debtor. Methodically documenting each step of the timetable has not only a procedural function, it secures the basis of the future compensation.

The consolidated timetable: the dates that bind the landlord

Reduced to a decision sequence, the post-judgment phase is organised around a few tipping points:

• service of the judgment, which makes the title enforceable against the occupant and starts the appeal period, without suspending automatic provisional enforcement
• issue of the order to vacate, the starting point of the two-month period in an inhabited place, and information to the prefect
• expiry of the two-month period, or of the date fixed in the order for uninhabited commercial premises
• any proceedings for periods of grace before the enforcement judge, the outcome of which conditions whether the timetable holds and whether the occupation compensation is preserved
• attempted eviction and report, the condition for requisitioning police assistance
• requisition addressed to the prefect, with a two-month period at the end of which silence amounts to refusal
• window from 1 November to 31 March, during which a residential eviction not yet carried out is stayed as of right
• prior compensation claim in the event of refusal of assistance, within the four-year limitation period

On a residential asset, the dominant constraint is the winter stay. On a commercial asset, it is twofold: checking that the premises are not inhabited, which allows rapid enforcement outside the truce, and controlling the fate of equipment and stock, which determines the date of return to the market.

Conclusion

The eviction judgment is not the end of the file, it is the middle. The real timetable turns on three variables that the landlord controls in part: the date on which the order to vacate is issued, the characterisation of the premises as regards their inhabited character, and the building of the file for requisitioning police assistance. The first two are a matter of anticipation; the third, of documentary rigour.

The position we advocate is as follows: on an asset with significant stakes, the order should be served in the same instrument as the judgment, and the requisition request prepared even before the attempted eviction, so that the report of failure immediately triggers the prefectoral period. Time gained at this stage is time taken off unpaid occupation compensation. And where assistance is refused, the compensation claim based on Article L. 153-1 of the French Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures should be brought without delay, with a substantiated statement of account.

Before any order is issued, have counsel audit three points: the exact operative part of your judgment, in particular the fixing of the occupation compensation and the authorisation to use police assistance; the actual use of the premises, which governs the application of the two-month period and of the winter stay; and the cut-off date beyond which physical enforcement will slip past 1 November.

Frequently asked questions

Is the order to vacate the premises mandatory for commercial premises? Yes. Article L. 411-1 of the French Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures makes any eviction subject to an enforceable title and to prior service of an order to vacate the premises, without distinction according to the nature of the lease. On the other hand, the two-month waiting period provided for by Article L. 412-1 concerns only inhabited places: for commercial premises in which no one resides, the date of vacation is fixed in the order and may be short. Checking the actual occupation of the premises is the indispensable precondition, an ancillary dwelling inhabited by the tenant reviving all the protections.

What is the eviction period after a judgment? No single period can be given. The minimum timetable combines service of the judgment, issue of the order to vacate, the two-month period of Article L. 412-1 in an inhabited place, then, in the event of resistance, a two-month period for processing the requisition of police assistance at the end of which the prefect's silence amounts to refusal. To this may be added periods of grace under Articles L. 412-3 and L. 412-4 and the winter stay from 1 November to 31 March. On a residential asset, a contested file is counted in quarters, not in weeks.

Does the winter truce apply to a commercial lease? The stay under Article L. 412-6 of the French Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures applies to occupants of residential premises. Premises used exclusively for commercial, craft or industrial activity and not inhabited do not benefit from it: the eviction may be carried out between 1 November and 31 March. On the other hand, where the premises are in fact a place where people live, in particular where there is an ancillary dwelling occupied by the tenant, the stay applies whatever the characterisation of the lease.