A right you don't have to ask permission for
When a B2B invoice becomes overdue in France, two things start running automatically the very next day — no reminder letter, no lawsuit, no advance warning to the debtor required: statutory late-payment interest on the amount owed, and a fixed recovery indemnity per invoice. Both are creditor rights under article L.441-10 of the French Commercial Code, and both are routinely left unclaimed — either because creditors don't know they exist, or because they assume claiming them will look aggressive.
You do not need a clause in your contract for either right to exist, and you do not forfeit them by not mentioning them earlier. They can be added to the amount claimed at any point — including for the first time in a formal notice sent months after the invoice fell due.
The interest: a floor rate that moves twice a year
For debts between businesses, French law sets a minimum rate for late-payment interest: the European Central Bank's main refinancing rate, plus 10 percentage points, with an absolute floor of three times the French statutory interest rate — whichever mechanism produces the applicable minimum. This rate resets at every half-year boundary (1 January and 1 July), which means the figure that applied to an invoice six months ago is not necessarily the one that applies today.
Because the rate moves twice a year and depends on which half-year your invoice fell due in, we do not publish a fixed percentage here — it would likely be wrong by the time you read it. Send us your invoice dates and we will confirm the exact rate that applies to your claim.
A contract can specify a higher rate than this floor, and that contractual rate is enforceable. It cannot specify a lower one — a clause setting a rate below the legal minimum is simply disregarded, and the statutory floor applies as if the clause were never written.
The flat indemnity: €40 per invoice, and it adds up
On top of interest, article D.441-5 of the Commercial Code grants a flat recovery indemnity of €40 per overdue invoice — automatic from the first day of delay, and payable in addition to the interest, not instead of it. It applies invoice by invoice: five overdue invoices means five separate €40 indemnities, or €200, on top of whatever interest has accrued on each one.
If your actual recovery costs — legal fees, enforcement fees — genuinely exceed €40, you can claim the additional, justified amount rather than being capped at the flat sum. The €40 is a floor, not a ceiling, when your real costs are documented.
How the calculation works
The formula behind the interest figure is straightforward once you have the applicable rate for the relevant half-year:
Amount owed (including tax) × applicable annual rate × (days overdue ÷ 365)
Days overdue run from the day after the invoice's due date to the date of actual payment — or to the date of your claim, if payment still hasn't happened. Confirm the rate for the relevant period with us before finalising a demand; a claim calculated on the wrong half-year's rate is an easy, avoidable error to hand a debtor's lawyer.
Claiming it: fold it into the formal notice
The natural place to assert both rights is your formal notice — the itemised demand should show the principal, the interest calculated to date, and the flat indemnity as three separate lines, not a single lump sum. A precise, itemised demand does two things at once: it signals to the debtor that you know exactly what you are owed and are not negotiating from a vague position, and it becomes the figure a French court will work from if the case proceeds further.
Won't asking for this look aggressive?
Rarely, in practice. Claiming statutory interest and the flat indemnity is standard commercial and legal practice in France, not an escalation — a debtor's own finance team will recognise the line items immediately. The one case worth thinking twice about is a strategic client relationship you want to preserve at all costs; even then, once you have engaged a lawyer and sent a formal notice, there is little strategic reason left to leave money on the table. See common mistakes foreign creditors make for the broader pattern of creditors under-claiming out of an excess of caution.
Frequently asked questions
No. The entitlement arises by law, not by contract term, and can be calculated and claimed at any point after the invoice becomes overdue — including retroactively, for the whole period of delay.
As long as the underlying debt itself is still within France's commercial prescription period, yes — interest and the flat indemnity are calculated for the whole period the invoice has been overdue. See our guide on the five-year prescription clock for how long that window actually stays open.
Yes. Paying the principal late does not extinguish these separate entitlements, though in practice they are usually claimed together with the principal rather than pursued afterward on their own.
This specific mechanism is French statutory law, so it applies when French law governs the contract. If a different law governs, your contract's own law will have its own late-payment rules — ask us to check which applies to your case.
The flat €40 indemnity alone is rarely worth pursuing in isolation, but as part of a formal notice for a genuine overdue balance, it costs nothing extra to include — it's simply added to the figure already being claimed.
Related guides
Tell us about your case
Outline your situation — Maître Bensimhon will reply personally within 1 business hour.
Reply within 1 business hour