Can You Sue a French Company in France? Jurisdiction and Applicable Law

Two questions that are constantly confused

Before any of the practical machinery matters — formal notice, court filings, seizures — a foreign creditor has to clear two threshold questions. They sound like one question. They are not, and treating them as one is the most common analytical mistake we see in incoming files:

• Which country's courts can hear this? That is jurisdiction.
• Which country's law decides who is right? That is applicable law.

The answers are determined by different rules and routinely diverge. A French court hearing your case does not mean French law will govern your contract — French judges apply foreign law regularly, and it is an ordinary part of commercial practice. Conversely, a contract governed by English or New York law can perfectly well be litigated in Paris.

Question 1 — can a French court hear the case?

Start with the contract

If your agreement contains a jurisdiction clause (a clause naming the courts of a given country), that clause is the first thing to read. Within the EU, such agreements are governed by Article 25 of Regulation (EU) No 1215/2012 — the "Brussels I bis" Regulation of 12 December 2012 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters. A valid clause will normally be given effect, even if it points away from France.

Send us that clause early. It does not usually close the door — but it changes the strategy, and finding it late is expensive.

No clause? Your debtor's French seat is the anchor

Absent a valid clause, the general rule is straightforward and works in your favour. Under Article 4 of Brussels I bis, a person domiciled in a Member State is sued in the courts of that Member State — and the text says expressly whatever their nationality. Because the rule keys on where the defendant is domiciled, not where the claimant is:

• A creditor in New York, Toronto, London or Sydney can rely on it just as an EU creditor can
• Brexit does not remove it — the rule is applied by the French court, and your debtor is in France

The alternative you may not need

Article 7(1) offers an additional option in contractual matters: the courts for the place of performance. For a sale of goods that is where the goods were, or should have been, delivered; for services, where the services were, or should have been, provided. This can open a court in another Member State — occasionally useful, but for an unpaid invoice against a French company it is usually a distraction. The judgment has to be enforced against assets, and the assets are in France.

Once French jurisdiction is settled, which French court hears it is a further, purely domestic question: a commercial dispute between businesses goes to the tribunal de commerce (article L.721-3 du Code de commerce), before the court for your debtor's registered office (article 42 du Code de procédure civile). We unpack that court in how France's commercial courts actually work.

Question 2 — whose law decides the merits?

This is governed, for contracts, by Regulation (EC) No 593/2008 of 17 June 2008 on the law applicable to contractual obligations — "Rome I". French courts apply it to determine the governing law, including where that turns out to be non-EU law.

If you chose a law, that choice governs

Article 3 states the principle plainly: a contract is governed by the law chosen by the parties. A choice-of-law clause in your terms of sale or framework agreement is therefore the decisive document — and it is entirely separate from any jurisdiction clause. It is perfectly coherent, and common, to have a contract governed by your own national law but litigated in France.

If you chose nothing, the default rules decide

Where the parties made no choice, Article 4 supplies default rules built around the party who provides the characteristic performance:

The result surprises many creditors: as the unpaid supplier, you are often the characteristic performer, so the default rules tend to point to your law rather than French law — while the court remains French.

When foreign law applies: proving it to a French judge

A French judge is not expected to know Delaware or Ontario law. Where foreign law governs, its content has to be established before the court, and the standard instrument is the certificat de coutume — a written opinion from a qualified lawyer or academic of the relevant legal system, setting out the applicable rules and, where useful, the case law and commentary that support them.

In practice this is a manageable, well-trodden step, not an obstacle. It does have two consequences worth planning for:

• Cost and lead time. The certificate is commissioned from a foreign practitioner and translated. Budget for it from the outset rather than discovering it mid-procedure.
• It rewards a well-drafted contract. The clearer your governing-law clause, the shorter and cheaper the exercise.

Why this usually matters less than creditors fear

Conflict-of-laws analysis can look forbidding on paper. For the ordinary case — goods delivered or services performed, invoice issued, no genuine dispute about the work — three things flatten it out:

• The debt itself is rarely law-sensitive. Whether the obligation to pay an accepted invoice exists is answered the same way in most commercial systems. The fight, when there is one, is about facts and evidence.
• Fast-track routes turn on the strength of the objection, not the governing law. A référé-provision asks whether the debtor's objection is seriously arguable — a question a French judge can reach without a full excursion into foreign law.
• Protective measures are unaffected. A pre-judgment asset freeze is a French enforcement measure. It is available whatever law governs the contract, and it can be obtained while the substantive analysis is still being worked out.

The practical sequence is therefore usually the reverse of the intuitive one: secure the assets first, then argue about which law says what.

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