An Algerian civil or commercial judgment carries res judicata authority in France as of right, provided it meets the conditions of article 1 of the Franco-Algerian convention of 27 August 1964, published by decree no. 65-679 of 11 August 1965. That authority does not amount to an enforcement title: article 2 prohibits any forced execution and any public formality before the decision has been declared enforceable in France. The French court does not retry the case, it checks the conditions of article 1, if necessary of its own motion, and must record the result of that review in its decision.
An Algerian company obtains, from the Oran court, a judgment ordering its French buyer to pay the equivalent of 420,000 euros for goods delivered and never paid for. The judgment is final, the debtor no longer has any assets in Algeria, but holds an account at a French bank and shares in a French property-holding company in Lyon. The creditor wants to attach these assets. It discovers that its perfectly valid judgment allows for no seizure and no registration in France until a French court has declared it enforceable.
This page covers the conventional regime applicable to Algerian decisions in France, the conditions of article 1, the scope of the court’s review, how public policy is treated in family matters with financial stakes, the documents to produce, the shift brought about by the entry into force of the apostille in Algeria on 9 July 2026, and the protective measures available before any exequatur.
1. Two texts not to be confused: the 1962 protocol and the 1964 convention
Judicial relations between France and Algeria rest on two successive instruments, and the first reflex is not to mix them up. The judicial protocol of 28 August 1962 organised cooperation in the aftermath of independence: transmission of documents, letters rogatory, cooperation between judicial administrations, transitional provisions on the fate of decisions rendered before the separation of the two judicial systems. It contains no title devoted to the recognition and enforcement of decisions in civil and commercial matters, and its final article in fact provided that it would apply until a judicial convention entered into force.
That convention came two years later. The convention between France and Algeria on the exequatur of judgments and public deeds of 27 August 1964, published by decree no. 65-679 of 11 August 1965, is the text on which a claim must be based. It is this convention the Cour de cassation refers to when it rules on the regularity of an Algerian decision, and it is this convention that must be cited in the writ of summons. A claim based on the 1962 protocol, or on ordinary law exequatur, exposes itself to a needless argument over its legal basis.
A practical difficulty is worth flagging, because it explains much of the imprecision found elsewhere. The text of the 1964 convention is not reproduced in a consolidated version on Légifrance, which offers only the scanned paper version of the Journal officiel. One therefore has to work from the text itself, and the published case law of the first civil chamber is the surest way to verify the exact scope of each article.
2. Res judicata as of right, and the conditions of article 1
Article 1 sets out the principle and its conditions, labelled by letter. Contentious and non-contentious decisions rendered by Algerian courts carry, as of right, res judicata authority in French territory, provided each condition is satisfied. Recognition therefore requires no prior proceedings: it is argued before the court seized of the merits, by way of a plea of inadmissibility, just as before the court seized of an exequatur application.
The condition of article 1(a) concerns competence: the decision must emanate from a court that was competent under the rules on conflicts of jurisdiction applied in the state where the decision is to be enforced, wording the Cour de cassation has reproduced verbatim when quashing a court of appeal that had dispensed with this review (Civ. 1re, 30 September 2009, no. 08-16.883). The condition of article 1(b) concerns the regularity of the proceedings: the French court must check whether the parties were duly summoned, represented or found to be in default under the law of the state where the decision was rendered (Civ. 1re, 18 October 1989, no. 87-18.457). The condition of article 1(d) concerns public policy: in civil matters, Algerian decisions carry res judicata authority as of right in France only if they contain nothing contrary to international public policy (Civ. 1re, 17 March 2021, no. 20-14.506). The remaining condition concerns the final character of the decision, and is verified through the certificate of no appeal required among the documents.
These four conditions form a whole. A creditor who documents only three of them risks having the claim dismissed on the fourth, and a well-advised defendant builds its defence on whichever one the file neglects.
3. Article 2: neither forced execution nor a public formality
Article 2 is the provision creditors discover too late. Decisions rendered by courts sitting in France or in Algeria may not give rise to any forced execution by the authorities of the other state, nor be the subject, on the part of those authorities, of any public formality, until they have been declared enforceable there. The Cour de cassation has had occasion to discuss its scope in a case concerning the protective seizure of an aircraft (Civ. 1re, 13 March 1985, no. 83-14.004).
Two practical consequences follow. The first is well known: no third-party attachment, no seizure and sale, no seizure of real property may be carried out on the strength of the Algerian judgment alone. The second is more often overlooked: the prohibition targets not only forced execution, it also targets any public formality. Registration of a final judicial mortgage, publication at the land registry, an entry on a register kept by a French authority, all of this requires the prior declaration of enforceability.
Domestic law says the same thing from another angle. Article L. 111-3 of the code of civil enforcement procedures, in the wording resulting from law no. 2026-307 of 23 April 2026, in force since 25 April 2026, lists among enforcement titles only foreign acts and judgments declared enforceable by a decision not subject to a suspensive appeal. Until that decision is rendered, the creditor has no enforcement title, only a claim and solid evidence of its merits.
4. Review by the French court: articles 4 and 5
The convention distinguishes two situations, and the distinction is a fine one. Article 4, first paragraph, targets the court before which a decision of the other state is invoked, for example by way of a plea of inadmissibility drawn from res judicata. That court, even if it is the court first seized, must check, if necessary of its own motion, whether that decision meets the conditions set out in article 1 to carry res judicata authority as of right, and it must record the outcome of that review in its decision (Civ. 1re, 13 December 2017, no. 16-20.810). Omitting that record is a ground for cassation, which gives the litigant a procedural handle that is often decisive.
Article 5 targets the authority seized of an exequatur application, and it bounds its role: it confines itself to checking whether the decision meets the conditions set out in article 1, with no fresh review of the evidence, and no assessment of the merits of the award. The debate concerns international regularity, not the merits of the Algerian judgment.
In France, the claim falls to the tribunal judiciaire, which rules with a single judge on applications for recognition and exequatur of foreign judicial decisions and public deeds, under article R. 212-8, 2°, of the code of judicial organisation. Article 509 of the code of civil procedure states, for its part, that judgments rendered by foreign courts are enforceable in France only in the manner and in the cases provided by law. The grounds a debtor may usefully raise against such a claim are set out in detail in our article on defences against exequatur.
5. The competence of the Algerian court, seen from France
The condition of article 1(a) refers to the rules on conflicts of jurisdiction applied in the state where the decision is to be enforced. The French court therefore assesses the competence of the Algerian court by reference to its own criteria of indirect competence, which requires a characterised connection between the dispute and Algeria and the absence of fraud in the choice of court. A court of appeal has thus held that it is for the French court, seized of a plea of inadmissibility drawn from res judicata abroad, to review the international regularity of the decision and to examine in particular whether the choice of court was not made fraudulently.
In commercial matters, the useful connecting factors are well known: place of delivery, place of performance, defendant’s registered office, place where the contract was concluded. The most frequent trap concerns the jurisdiction clause, which can cut both ways. A clause designating the Algerian courts reinforces the competence of the originating court. A clause designating the French courts, on the contrary, deprives the Algerian judgment of a solid basis, and the debtor will not fail to invoke it.
This assessment is prepared upstream, during the Algerian proceedings. Having the connecting factors recorded in the judgment, producing the contractual documents that establish the place of performance, avoiding bringing the claim before a court whose competence rests solely on the claimant’s domicile: these reflexes cost little in Algiers and are worth a great deal in Paris.
6. International public policy, and what it does not cover
The condition of article 1(d) is the one that generates the most litigation, because it is invoked indiscriminately. French international public policy is not the same as compliance with French law. An Algerian decision applying the Algerian civil code, the Algerian family code or Algerian commercial law is not contrary to public policy merely because it does not reason the way a French court would have.
Recent case law shows this clearly in family matters, where considerable financial interests are often at stake. The Cour de cassation holds that recognising a divorce granted abroad under a law that does not give spouses equal access to divorce does not offend international public policy where it is invoked by the spouse for whom the least favourable rules were provided, where the proceedings were not tainted by fraud, and where the other spouse was able to assert their rights. It concluded from this that a khol’ divorce, provided for by article 54 of the Algerian family code and requested by the wife, could take effect in France (Civ. 1re, 17 March 2021, no. 20-14.506).
Review nonetheless remains real. The first civil chamber quashed a court of appeal that had found a breach of public policy under article 1(d) without observing the requirements of adversarial debate (Civ. 1re, 12 July 2017, no. 16-24.013). The lesson is twofold: public policy must be argued, and it must be argued while respecting procedure. A unilateral repudiation obtained without the wife having been given the opportunity to defend herself remains the typical case for refusal, but a refusal must be reasoned, it cannot be presumed.
7. Mixed cases: the financial effect of a family judgment
Many Franco-Algerian matters are neither purely commercial nor purely family ones. A divorce judgment rendered in Constantine sets maintenance, awards an asset, opens the liquidation of a matrimonial property regime, and it is in France that the account, the apartment or the company share is located. The question put to French counsel is then not whether the divorce is recognised, but what the creditor can do with the financial part it contains.
The answer follows the logic of the convention. Recognition as of right gives the judgment its res judicata effect, which is enough to set up the status of the parties or to defeat an identical claim. It is not enough to attach assets. To recover arrears of maintenance, to have the asset sold, to register a security, the declaration of enforceability under article 2 is required, obtained before the tribunal judiciaire. For this purpose, a monetary award contained in a divorce judgment is no different from a commercial award.
Once exequatur is obtained, the decision produces its effects under French law. The Cour de cassation has held that default interest runs only from the exequatur decision, not from the foreign decision (Civ. 1re, 19 November 2015, no. 14-25.162). On an old claim, the difference amounts to tens of thousands of euros, and that alone justifies not letting an Algerian title sit unused for years.
8. Documents, the apostille since 9 July 2026, and urgency
The convention lists the documents to be produced in support of a claim. The party seeking enforcement must in particular produce, in the case of a default judgment, an authentic copy of the summons served on the defaulting party, a requirement whose disregard justified a quashing (Civ. 1re, 18 October 1989, no. 87-18.457). To this are added a certified copy of the decision meeting the conditions for its authenticity, proof of its service, and the certificate establishing that it is no longer open to appeal. It is this last document that most often delays matters, and it can only be obtained from the Algerian court registry.
The circulation of these documents has just changed regime. Algeria acceded, on 5 November 2025, to the Hague Convention of 5 October 1961 abolishing the requirement of legalisation for foreign public documents, which entered into force for it on 9 July 2026. Since that date, an apostille issued by the competent Algerian authority replaces consular legalisation for public documents intended for France, which shortens the preparation of a file by several weeks. For documents legalised before that date, the regime of decree no. 2020-1370 of 10 November 2020 retains its relevance, and there is no need to redo what has already been done.
Urgency remains. Between the Algerian decision and the declaration of enforceability, the debtor has time to organise its own insolvency. Article L. 511-1 of the code of civil enforcement procedures allows a creditor to ask the judge for authorisation to carry out a protective measure where the claim appears well founded in principle and circumstances threaten its recovery, the exemption from authorisation under article L. 511-2 being out of reach as long as the title is not enforceable in France. A final Algerian judgment provides solid support for the first point. This strategy is developed in our article on protective measures before exequatur, and what follows plays out on the assets themselves, whether that means attaching a bank account or seizing real property.
We have brought together, in a practical guide, all the checks to carry out on a foreign title before bringing any proceedings in France, along with the documents to gather depending on the applicable regime and the actual time frames observed before French courts. You can download it here. If your matter is already under way, our page on enforcing foreign judgments in France sets out how we assist clients, and you can write to us through our contact page.
Frequently asked questions
Should the 1962 protocol or the 1964 convention be invoked?
The convention of 27 August 1964, published by decree no. 65-679 of 11 August 1965. It is this convention that organises the recognition as of right of decisions and their declaration of enforceability, and it is this convention the Cour de cassation refers to when ruling on the regularity of an Algerian judgment. The judicial protocol of 28 August 1962 governs judicial cooperation, the transmission of documents and letters rogatory, matters useful during proceedings but unrelated to exequatur. Basing a claim on the protocol exposes it to an argument over its legal basis that the debtor will exploit.
Does a recognised Algerian judgment allow a bank account to be seized in France?
No, not by itself. Recognition as of right confers res judicata authority, which allows the judgment to be relied on, but article 2 of the convention prohibits any forced execution and any public formality before the decision has been declared enforceable by a French court. Article L. 111-3 of the code of civil enforcement procedures says the same thing under domestic law. Exequatur must therefore be obtained before the tribunal judiciaire before any seizure can be carried out.
Can a French court retry a case already judged in Algeria?
No. Article 5 of the convention bounds the role of the authority seized of an exequatur application, which confines itself to checking whether the decision meets the conditions set out by the convention. There is no review of the merits, no fresh review of the evidence, and no control over the merits of the award. The debate concerns the competence of the originating court, the regularity of service, the final character of the decision and its compliance with international public policy, and nothing else.
Can an Algerian divorce have financial effects in France?
Yes, on two distinct conditions. Recognition as of right is enough for the status of the parties, provided the conditions of article 1 are met, and the Cour de cassation has accepted that a khol’ divorce requested by the wife does not offend international public policy (Civ. 1re, 17 March 2021, no. 20-14.506). However, to recover maintenance arrears, have an asset sold, or register a security in France, the declaration of enforceability remains necessary, exactly as for a commercial award.
Must an Algerian judgment intended for France still be legalised?
Not since 9 July 2026. Algeria acceded, on 5 November 2025, to the Hague Convention of 5 October 1961 abolishing the requirement of legalisation for foreign public documents, which entered into force for it on that date. An apostille issued by the competent Algerian authority now replaces consular legalisation. Documents legalised before that date remain valid, and there is no need to redo a formality already completed.
On the same subject, in North America: enforcing a Canadian or Québec judgment in France. In the same region: enforcing a Moroccan judgment in France, enforcing a Tunisian judgment in France, enforcing an OHADA judgment or a CCJA ruling in France. On the related questions: securing assets in France before exequatur, exequatur of an arbitral award, and the six factors that determine whether a foreign title will be enforceable.