Disclaimer: This article is for general information only and does not constitute legal, tax, or financial advice. French eviction timing rules are governed by the Code des procédures civiles d’exécution, the loi du 6 juillet 1989, and the loi anti-squat du 27 juillet 2023; case-by-case timing depends on the local court’s calendar, the préfecture’s response, and the tenant’s procedural conduct. Always consult a qualified French notaire, avocat, or commissaire de justice before acting on anything you read here. The English Investor accepts no liability for decisions taken on the basis of this article.
If you ask a French commissaire de justice how long it takes to evict a non-paying tenant, the honest answer is “between 8 months and 3 years, and we won’t know which until the file is half done”. For British landlords used to the relative predictability of a section 8 or section 21 timeline, this is one of the harder things to plan around. This article walks through the actual sequence — every délai, every notification, every place the clock can stop — and tells you what to expect at each step. If you haven’t yet read the procedural overview, our guide on evicting a French tenant sets out the broader picture. The trêve hivernale (the five-month winter freeze) is treated separately in our trêve hivernale guide.
The headline number: 8 months minimum, 2 years on average
Best case, with a tenant who doesn’t engage and a court that moves promptly, the minimum incompressible time between the first missed rent and a bailiff at the door is around 8 months — and that’s only if you avoid the trêve hivernale entirely. The realistic average is closer to 2 years. Two procedural facts drive that: first, the audience itself often lands several months after the assignation in busy jurisdictions; second, the préfet then has up to 2 months to decide on the force publique. Add a winter freeze and you’re routinely past 24 months.
The good news, such as it is, is that the timeline is procedurally predictable once you know the steps. The bad news is that none of the time runs in your favour: the longer the tenant stays, the more rent piles up that you may never recover. Time the procedure properly and the cost of waiting becomes a known number.
Step-by-step: every délai, every box to tick
Step 1 — Day 0 to Day ~30: Mise en demeure and friendly chase
The clock effectively starts on the first missed payment. Most landlords spend the first 15-30 days trying to recover informally — phone calls, an email, a registered letter (lettre recommandée avec accusé de réception). This isn’t a procedural step the law requires before a commandement de payer, but in practice it’s worth doing for two reasons: it produces written evidence the tenant was put on notice, and most rental-default insurance policies (Garantie Loyers Impayés or GLI) require a documented mise en demeure early in the timeline before they’ll pay out. If you have a guarantor (caution solidaire), this is also when you’d notify them — the rules on when and how to do this are technical and policy-specific, so check your specific cautionnement document.
Step 2 — Day ~30: Commandement de payer (commissaire de justice)
Once friendly recovery has failed, the formal procedure begins with a commandement de payer visant la clause résolutoire, served by a commissaire de justice (the modern name for what used to be the huissier de justice — the bailiff who delivers court documents and enforces judgments). This is the statutory act that triggers the clause résolutoire of your lease — the contractual provision that automatically terminates the lease if the rent isn’t paid within a defined period.
This is where landlords need to pay attention to one of the most important reforms of recent years. The loi anti-squat of 27 July 2023 reduced the standard délai for the tenant to pay from two months to six weeks. But here is the trap: the new 6-week délai applies only to leases signed after the law’s entry into force. The Cour de cassation, in its avis of 13 June 2024, held that for leases signed before the loi anti-squat the original contractual délai (typically 2 months) continues to apply, because the parties’ contractual stipulation prevails. Practical consequence: if your lease pre-dates the loi anti-squat and you assign at 6 weeks, the clause résolutoire won’t yet be acquired, and the court will reject your application on the merits — costing you 2-3 months and a fresh commandement. Always check your specific lease’s clause résolutoire before instructing the commissaire de justice.
Step 3 — Around the same time: notification of the commandement to the CCAPEX
Article 24 of the loi du 6 juillet 1989 requires the commissaire de justice to signal the commandement de payer to the Commission de coordination des actions de prévention des expulsions locatives (CCAPEX), the prefectoral commission whose job is to attempt mediation, arrange social-fund support, and try to keep the tenant housed. In practice the commissaire takes care of this notification at the same time they serve the commandement.
For a landlord, this isn’t optional and isn’t strategically dispensable: where the bailleur is a corporate entity (other than a family-only SCI), the assignation cannot be brought before the expiry of a 2-month delay following the CCAPEX referral, on penalty of inadmissibility. The CCAPEX procedure runs in parallel to the court track and adds no time to the overall timeline if you handle the notification promptly.
Step 4 — Day ~75 to ~90: The 6-week délai expires; assignation prepared
If the tenant hasn’t paid the arrears within the 6-week délai (or 2-month délai for pre-anti-squat leases), the clause résolutoire is automatically activated. The lease is now considered terminated de plein droit. The tenant becomes an occupant sans droit ni titre, owing not rent but an indemnité d’occupation equal to the rent.
At this point the bailleur instructs an avocat (the French legal practitioner — roughly equivalent to a UK solicitor and barrister combined into one role) to prepare the assignation devant le juge des contentieux de la protection — the modern name for what used to be the tribunal d’instance. The avocat draws up the assignation and the commissaire de justice signifies it to the tenant.
Under article 24, III of the loi du 6 juillet 1989, the assignation must be notified to the préfet at least 6 weeks before the audience date (this is the new délai introduced by the loi anti-squat, replacing the old 2-month rule). The Cour de cassation, in its avis of 6 November 2025 (n° 25-70.018), clarified that the 6 weeks should be counted in days (42 days), running backwards from the audience date with no possibility of extension. Failure to notify the préfet 6 weeks before the audience makes the assignation inadmissible — the most common procedural own-goal in eviction files.
Step 5 — Months 4 to 9: The audience and the jugement
This is where the calendar starts to matter. The 6-week délai is the statutory minimum between assignation and audience. Court calendars in Paris and the major métropoles regularly run 3-6 months out, while less congested jurisdictions can hit something close to the minimum. Service-Public.fr — the French government’s official public-information portal — describes the 6-week rule as “le délai minimum, souvent plus long en raison du manque de disponibilité auprès du tribunal”.
Once the audience has taken place, the judge takes the case in délibéré. According to Ministère de la Justice statistics, the average time from audience to jugement is around 5.1 months in eviction cases, though simple uncontested cases come down faster. The jugement will typically (a) confirm the activation of the clause résolutoire, (b) order the tenant’s expulsion, (c) award the indemnité d’occupation and unpaid rent arrears, and (d) often grant the tenant a délai de grâce (judicial extension) under article L. 412-3 CPCE — typically 3 months, sometimes more.
Step 6 — After jugement: appeal délai (1 month), and the exécution provisoire question
The jugement is signified to the tenant by a commissaire de justice. From signification, the tenant has 1 month to appeal. Whether you can serve the next document — the commandement de quitter les lieux — while the appeal window is still open or while an appeal is pending depends on whether the jugement was granted exécution provisoire. Since the décret n° 2019-1333 of 11 December 2019 reforming civil procedure, exécution provisoire is in principle the default for first-instance civil judgments, but in eviction matters judges frequently qualify or exclude it given the irreversibility of the consequences for the occupant. The tenant can also apply to the premier président of the cour d’appel to suspend it under article 514-3 CPC, typically on grounds such as the age and health of the occupants.
Practical advice: don’t assume the appeal window is closed before reading the operative part of your specific jugement. If exécution provisoire was granted, you can move forward immediately. If it wasn’t, you’ll typically wait out the 1-month appeal window before serving the commandement de quitter les lieux. In contested files where the tenant successfully suspends exécution provisoire, the procedure can stall for the full 12-18 months of the appeal — which is the worst-case scenario for the timeline.
Step 7 — Months 10 to 12: The 2-month L. 412-1 délai
From the date of signification of the commandement de quitter les lieux, article L. 412-1 of the Code des procédures civiles d’exécution imposes a mandatory 2-month delay before physical eviction can take place. This délai is reserved for residential premises — commercial leases don’t get it. It can be reduced or removed by the juge de l’exécution if the occupant entered par voie de fait (squatters) or where a JAF order overrides it, but for the standard defaulting tenant it runs in full.
During this 2-month window, the juge de l’exécution can also grant an additional hardship extension of up to 3 months under article L. 412-2 CPCE, where the eviction would have conséquences d’une exceptionnelle dureté. In practice this lever is most often pulled for vulnerable tenants — children, elderly occupants, those without alternative housing. It can extend Step 7 from 2 months to 5 months.
Step 8 — Months 12 to 14: Réquisition de la force publique
If the tenant hasn’t left voluntarily by the end of the L. 412-1 délai, the commissaire de justice attends the property and either takes possession with the tenant present and willing to leave, or records that they cannot proceed without police assistance. In the latter case — almost always, in a contested file — the commissaire de justice files a réquisition de la force publique with the préfet.
The préfet has up to 2 months to grant or refuse the réquisition. In practice, most préfectures use the full 2 months. If the préfet refuses, or stays silent past the 2-month deadline, the State automatically becomes liable for the rent the bailleur loses thereafter under article L. 153-1 CPCE — a meaningful protection that we cover separately in our forthcoming guide on the force publique and State liability.
Step 9 — The eviction itself
If the préfet grants the force publique, the commissaire de justice and the police force coordinate a date for the physical eviction. The tenant is given a final notice; on the appointed day, the lock is changed, an inventory of any remaining belongings is taken, and the bailleur recovers possession. The tenant’s belongings are stored under article R. 433-1 CPCE for a one-month period, after which they can be sold or disposed of.
The trêve hivernale freeze: the wildcard
Every step above can run during the trêve hivernale (1 November to 31 March each year) except Step 9 — the physical eviction itself. So a tenant who reaches Step 7 in October will see the procedural clock keep ticking through the winter, but the bailiff and police won’t actually arrive until 1 April at the earliest. The same is true for the réquisition de la force publique: the préfet will process the file but won’t authorise enforcement until the trêve has lifted.
Practical implication: if your timeline has you arriving at Step 7 between July and October, you have a real chance of completing the eviction before the next 1 November. If you arrive between November and March, you’re looking at a 5-month winter pause baked in. Time the commandement de payer accordingly where you can — though in practice you usually can’t, because rent defaults rarely follow a planning calendar. Our trêve hivernale guide covers this in detail.
What the timeline looks like in three scenarios
Best case (8-10 months): Tenant doesn’t engage, doesn’t appeal, no délai de grâce granted, no trêve overlap, préfet processes the réquisition promptly. This is uncommon but it happens — typically when the tenant has effectively abandoned the property and the file is uncontested.
Average case (18-24 months): Tenant attends the audience, judge grants 3 months délai de grâce, commandement de quitter les lieux signified, full 2 months L. 412-1 délai runs, one trêve hivernale freeze adds 5 months. This is what most British landlords actually experience.
Worst case (30+ months): The jugement does not carry exécution provisoire (or the tenant successfully suspends it on appeal), the L. 412-2 hardship extension is granted, and the procedure overlaps two consecutive trêves hivernales. This is the file that becomes a multi-year saga and where the indemnité d’occupation order is essentially worthless because the tenant has no assets to attach.
Common landlord traps that extend the timeline
The wrong commandement de payer délai. The loi anti-squat’s 6-week délai applies only to leases signed after 27 July 2023. Pre-anti-squat leases keep their contractual 2-month délai. Get this wrong and the clause résolutoire won’t be considered acquired — the action will fail on the merits and you’ll have to redo the commandement, losing 2-3 months.
Skipping the article 24, III préfet notification. The notification of the assignation to the préfet, at least 6 weeks before the audience, is mandatory. A bailleur who instructs the avocat to file the assignation without the préfet notification will have the action dismissed and have to start over. This is the single most common procedural own-goal in eviction files.
Pausing the procedure during the trêve. The most common own-goal at the back end. The trêve only suspends Step 9 — every other step runs through the winter. Bailleurs who pause their avocat or commissaire de justice in November and resume in April have effectively donated 5 months to their defaulting tenant.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to evict a tenant in France in 2026?
Between 8 months (best case, no trêve overlap, uncontested file) and around 2 years on average, occasionally 30 months or more in contested or appealed files where exécution provisoire is excluded. The minimum incompressible time between the first missed rent and the bailiff at the door is roughly 8 months when everything aligns.
What is the délai for the commandement de payer in 2026?
Six weeks for leases signed after 27 July 2023 (the loi anti-squat). Two months for leases signed before that date — the contractual délai of the lease prevails, per the Cour de cassation’s avis of 13 June 2024. Always check your specific lease’s clause résolutoire before serving the commandement.
How long does the préfet have to grant the force publique?
Two months from the réquisition. If the préfet refuses the réquisition or remains silent past the 2-month deadline, the State becomes liable for the rent the bailleur loses thereafter under article L. 153-1 CPCE.
Does the trêve hivernale extend the entire timeline by 5 months?
Only if the file reaches the physical eviction stage during the trêve. If you reach the commandement de quitter les lieux stage in October and the L. 412-1 two-month délai expires in December, the eviction will be frozen until 1 April — adding roughly 4 months. If your file hits the same stage in May, the trêve has no impact at all because the eviction completes before 1 November.
Does the tenant’s appeal suspend the eviction?
It depends on whether the jugement was granted exécution provisoire. The décret n° 2019-1333 of 11 December 2019 made exécution provisoire the default in principle for first-instance civil judgments, but in eviction matters judges frequently qualify or exclude it given the irreversibility for the occupant. The tenant can also apply to the premier président of the cour d’appel to suspend it under article 514-3 CPC, typically on grounds such as the age or health of the occupants. Always check the operative part of your specific jugement before assuming the appeal does or doesn’t suspend enforcement.
What is the délai de grâce of article L. 412-3 CPCE?
It is a judicial extension the judge can grant the tenant at the time of the jugement, typically 3 months and up to 1 year, where the tenant is making good-faith efforts to find alternative housing. It does not affect the trêve hivernale or the L. 412-1 délai — it is a separate, additional layer of protection awarded at the judge’s discretion.
