The Foreign Creditor's Complete Guide to French Insolvency (2026)

In 2024, 67,830 French companies entered insolvency proceedings — a record high. If you do business with French companies (as a supplier, customer, or lender), the odds of being affected have never been higher.

The problem for foreign creditors is twofold: you often don't know a French partner is insolvent until months after the fact, and by then, the deadline to file your claim may have passed.

This guide explains exactly what happens, what your rights are, and — critically — how to make sure you never miss a deadline.

1. What happens when a French company goes insolvent

French insolvency law provides for several types of proceedings, depending on the severity of the situation:

In all three cases, the court publishes the opening judgment in the BODACC (Bulletin Officiel des Annonces Civiles et Commerciales) — France's official legal gazette for commercial announcements. This publication triggers your deadline.

The two actors you need to know

• Administrateur judiciaire (judicial administrator): manages the company during reorganisation proceedings and receives claims in sauvegarde and redressement.
• Mandataire liquidateur (liquidator): appointed in liquidation proceedings to wind down the company, sell assets, and distribute proceeds to creditors.

Both are appointed by the court and their contact details are published in the BODACC notice.

2. Your deadlines as a foreign creditor (2 to 4 months)

The extended 4-month deadline for foreign creditors was established to account for the fact that foreign companies may not have immediate access to the French BODACC publication. However — and this is critical — the 4 months still runs from BODACC publication, not from when you actually find out.

In practice, most foreign creditors learn of a French partner's insolvency through an invoice that stops being paid. By that point, several weeks or months may already have elapsed.

3. How do you find out? The BODACC problem

The BODACC publishes every insolvency opening in France within 15 days of the court judgment. In 2024, that meant approximately 67,830 publications — roughly 260 new entries on every business day.

The BODACC is published entirely in French, on the website bodacc.fr. It does offer a free alert service — but it operates on keyword search (you enter a company name and receive alerts when that exact string appears). This creates several problems:

• Name matching is unreliable: "Acme France SAS" might be published as "ACME FRANCE" or "ACME FR". A keyword alert misses it.
• It's French-only: No English interface. Foreign credit managers rarely know it exists.
• No structured watchlist: You can't upload a list of 50 partner SIRENs and get automatic matching.
• No deadline calculation: The BODACC alert tells you there was a publication; it doesn't tell you "you have until 15 April to file your claim."

The result: most foreign creditors only discover a French insolvency when their invoice goes unpaid and they start chasing. By then, weeks or months of their deadline have already elapsed.

4. How to file your proof of claim (déclaration de créances)

Once you've identified the insolvency and confirmed you're within the deadline, here's what you need to do:

Step 1: Identify the court administrator

The BODACC notice includes the name and address of the appointed administrator (administrateur judiciaire) or liquidator (mandataire liquidateur). This is the person you need to file with.

Step 2: Prepare your documentation

Your proof of claim must include:

• The total amount owed (as of the date proceedings opened)
• If in foreign currency: the equivalent in euros at the date of opening
• Supporting documents: invoices, purchase orders, contracts, account statements
• Whether the debt is secured (and by what) or unsecured

Step 3: File by the deadline

Claims can be filed:

• By registered letter (lettre recommandée avec accusé de réception) to the administrator
• Electronically via the official portal at creditors.fr (if the proceedings use the electronic platform)

No specific form is required, but the filing must clearly identify the creditor, the debtor, and the amount owed. Keep a copy of everything with proof of receipt.

Step 4: Await verification

The administrator will verify each claim. You may receive a request for additional documentation. If your claim is disputed, there may be a hearing before the commercial court. This process can take months to years in complex proceedings.

5. What can you realistically recover?

French insolvency proceedings distribute assets in a strict priority order. As an unsecured trade creditor (fournisseur), you are typically in the lowest priority class:

The harsh reality is that in most French liquidation proceedings, unsecured trade creditors recover very little — often nothing. The value of filing your claim is twofold:

1. You preserve your right to recovery in the unlikely event there are sufficient assets.
2. You may recover something in a reorganisation plan (redressement judiciaire), where creditors sometimes receive a structured payment over several years.

Not filing your claim is always worse than filing it. The 4-month deadline costs nothing to meet — but missing it permanently destroys any chance of recovery.

6. Prevention: monitoring your French partners

The best strategy is early detection. The BODACC publishes insolvency proceedings before the company has typically stopped paying — often within days or weeks of the court judgment. Early detection gives you maximum time to:

• Stop further deliveries and reduce your exposure
• File your claim well within the deadline
• Activate any credit insurance policies (which often require timely notification)
• Recover goods that may still be at the company's premises (if you have a retention of title clause)

Monitoring options

For companies with 10–200 French business partners, the manual approach is impractical, and enterprise credit monitoring services are priced for very large companies. BODACC Creditor Alerts was built specifically for this gap.