The ELAN Act never created an obligation to draw up a multi year works plan in a French condominium. The expression does not even appear in it. That confusion, sustained by a good part of the professional literature, conceals a second and costlier one: the difference between the project the association must have prepared and the plan the general meeting may or may not adopt. Between the two sits a regime of sanctions that does not exist in the way people imagine, and a works fund that forgives no delay at all. Here are the six points that decide what a condominium really has to fear, as the law stood on 30 August 2026.
1. The ELAN Act never created this obligation
The check is immediate: the word multi year appears in the ELAN Act of 23 November 2018 only three times, in contexts unconnected with condominiums, and the phrase multi year works plan does not appear once. The obligation was born of article 171 of the Climate and Resilience Act of 22 August 2021, which rewrote article 14-2 of the Act of 10 July 1965 to house the draft plan, and moved the works fund into a new article 14-2-1. It took effect only from 1 January 2023 for large condominiums and from 1 January 2025 for the others. Anyone dating the obligation to 2018 is wrong about its basis, wrong about when it came into force, and often wrong about its purpose: the text is aimed first at preserving the building and the safety of its occupants, energy renovation coming only third in the list of article 14-2, I.
2. The project is not the plan, and the meeting is never obliged to adopt it
The text consistently distinguishes the draft multi year works plan, a technical document the association is required to have drawn up, from the multi year works plan, being what the meeting has adopted, in whole or in part, by the majority of article 25 (Act of 1965, art. 14-2, II). The meeting is required to do nothing: neither to adopt the project put to it, nor to justify a refusal. One procedural point deserves attention since the bridging mechanism of article 25-1 was generalised by the Ordinance of 30 October 2019: a project that has obtained at least a third of the votes of all the owners must be put to an immediate second vote by the majority of article 24. A managing agent who omits that second vote exposes the decision to annulment, and that is most likely where the first litigation on the plan will arise, the ground being virgin, since the Court of Cassation has yet to rule on article 14-2 in its 2021 form.
3. There is no sanction, but silence has a price
Neither article 14-2, nor article 14-2-1, nor Decree no. 2022-663 of 25 April 2022 lays down any fine, administrative sanction or nullity for the absence of a project, a refusal to adopt or the inadequacy of the plan adopted. The constraint lies elsewhere. The administrative authority may, in the exercise of its safety and public health powers, draw up the plan of its own motion at the expense of the association where its request has gone unanswered for a month (Act of 1965, art. 14-2, III): an association that would not pay 6,000 euros for the project will then be billed, without having been consulted on the provider or on the amount, for a document whose cost it will not be arguing about. And from January 2028, an order of 23 June 2026 will add to the national condominium register the existence or absence of the plan: public, comparable, searchable data, weighing on the value of the lots just as the energy rating does. No fine will have been created, and the constraint will nonetheless have become tangible.
4. The works fund is the obligation that bites, not the plan
The clock of the fund is not the clock of the plan: article 14-2-1 requires a works fund to be set up ten years after completion of the building, five years before the plan obligation applies, which happens only at fifteen years. Since 1 January 2023 the text provides for no exemption at all, neither for buildings of fewer than ten lots nor on the strength of a reassuring survey; the exemptions of the old article 14-2 from the ALUR Act died with the reform. The minimum annual contribution is at least 5 per cent of the forecast budget, raised to the higher of that 5 per cent and 2.5 per cent of the programmed works where a plan has been adopted. On a budget of 210,000 euros and a plan costed at 1.9 million euros, the gap runs from 10,500 to 47,500 euros a year. Paragraph III of article 14-2-1 adds a harshness that sellers often discover too late: the sums paid in belong definitively to the association and are never refunded on a sale, absent an express recovery clause.
5. Recovery of contributions tightened in 2024 and 2026
The contribution to the works fund is apportioned by general shares, without any need to consider whether a given item of equipment is useful to a given lot (Cass. 3e civ., 4 July 2024, no. 22-21.758, reported). Recovery, by contrast, has tightened markedly: the prior formal demand must now state precisely the nature and the amount of each instalment claimed, on pain of the court action being inadmissible (Cass. 3e civ., opinion, 12 December 2024, no. 24-70.007, reported; confirmed by Cass. 3e civ., 18 June 2026, no. 24-19.950, FS-B). A global demand, which until now simply referred to unpaid charges, is no longer enough: recovery templates predating December 2024 have to be redone, item by item. The legislature has in fact sanctioned only the handling of funds, and automatically so: failure to open a separate interest bearing account renders the managing agent appointment void as of right at the expiry of three months from his designation (Act of 1965, art. 18, II). No equivalent provision sanctions failure to put the plan on the agenda.
6. Annual re-tabling is the breach easiest to prove
The second paragraph of II of article 14-2 is the most frequently ignored provision of the scheme: it requires that the agenda of every meeting called to approve the accounts include either the question of adoption, if the plan has not been adopted, or the decisions implementing the timetable. The obligation is therefore annual and perpetual. A refusal to adopt closes nothing: it reopens the file the following year, and the year after that. A managing agent who files the project away after a negative vote creates a breach that recurs in every financial year, and the proof of which lies in a single document, the agenda. It is the breach easiest to establish in the whole field. It is not to be confused with the liability of the agent for the way the vote went: an agent who instructed an expert and then tabled the resolution is not answerable for the refusal of the meeting (CA Montpellier, 7 April 2026, RG no. 23/03844). He answers for what he had to put to the vote, not for what the meeting decided.
The firm has set out the whole scheme, the genealogy of the texts, the timetable of the obligation, the content of the project, the chain of votes, the works fund, sanctions and financing, in a practical guide on the multi year works plan in condominiums, including the list of nine checks to carry out before each meeting approving the accounts. For assistance on a property matter, see our real estate law page, and those on challenging a condominium general meeting, on latent defects in a property purchase, on defective works and the ten year warranty, on buying property in France as a non resident and on late delivery under an off plan sale.
Frequently asked questions
Which statute created the multi year works plan?
Article 171 of the Climate and Resilience Act of 22 August 2021, which rewrote article 14-2 of the Act of 10 July 1965, and not the ELAN Act of 2018, where the expression does not appear. The obligation took effect on 1 January 2023 for large condominiums and on 1 January 2025 for the others.
Must the general meeting adopt the plan put to it?
No. The association must have a draft plan prepared; the meeting is free to adopt it in whole, in part, or not at all, by the majority of article 25, and does not have to give reasons for a refusal. Where the project obtains at least a third of the votes of all the owners, a second vote by the majority of article 24 must be taken immediately, and omitting it exposes the decision to annulment.
What is the penalty for having no plan?
There is no fine, no administrative sanction and no nullity. But the administrative authority may draw up the plan of its own motion at the expense of the association where its request has gone unanswered for a month, and from January 2028 the national condominium register will record whether a plan exists, which will weigh on the value of the lots.
How much must be paid into the works fund?
At least 5 per cent of the forecast budget, or, where a plan has been adopted, the higher of that 5 per cent and 2.5 per cent of the programmed works. The fund must be set up ten years after completion of the building, and since 1 January 2023 there is no exemption, including for buildings of fewer than ten lots. The sums paid in are not refunded on a sale unless an express clause provides for it.
Does the plan have to be put back on the agenda every year?
Yes. Every meeting called to approve the accounts must have on its agenda either the adoption of the plan, if it has not been adopted, or the decisions implementing its timetable. A refusal one year does not end the obligation, and filing the project away after a negative vote creates a breach that recurs each financial year.