Two Franco-Moroccan conventions coexist and do not cover the same matters. For a civil or commercial claim, the one of 5 October 1957 applies, with the four conditions of its article 16 and a requirement for a declaration of exequatur before any seizure. The convention of 10 August 1981 covers only personal status and family matters. Using the wrong convention costs months.
A Casablanca supplier obtains from the Casablanca commercial court an order against a French importer to pay 380,000 euros for goods delivered, plus interest. The decision has become final. The importer owns nothing in Morocco, but holds commercial premises in France, a bank account, and claims against its own customers. The supplier wants to know how long it will take to reach a seizure, and what needs to be arranged in Casablanca before its French lawyer takes any action.
The answer rests on an old but still-current text: the convention on mutual judicial assistance, exequatur of judgments and extradition signed between France and Morocco on 5 October 1957, published by decree no. 60-11 of 12 January 1960. Its Title II, entitled “Exequatur in civil and commercial matters,” articles 16 to 26, displaces ordinary law and replaces it with its own regime, more predictable and more generous than most comparable conventions.
1. Two conventions, a sorting rule to know first
This is the most common mistake on the subject, found both among litigants and in legal pleadings. Two Franco-Moroccan instruments deal with recognition of decisions, and the wrong one is often invoked.
The convention of 5 October 1957 governs civil and commercial matters. It is the one to rely on for a contractual claim, a commercial award, tort liability, a dispute between partners, or a rent debt. Its Title II organises recognition as of right, exequatur, the required documents, and the procedure.
The convention of 10 August 1981, published by decree no. 83-435 of 27 May 1983, concerns the status of persons and the family and judicial cooperation. It is the text for divorce, maintenance, custody and filiation cases. It cannot be used to enforce a Moroccan commercial award in France.
The sorting rule is therefore simple and comes down to one question: what is the main subject of the decision whose effect is sought in France. A Moroccan divorce judgment that incidentally settles a matrimonial property regime remains a personal status judgment. An order to pay the price of a sale remains commercial, even where the parties are married to each other. In mixed cases, the application should be based on both conventions, as primary and subsidiary grounds, rather than leaving the court to choose.
2. The four conditions of article 16
Article 16 provides that decisions rendered by French or Moroccan courts enjoy res judicata authority as of right on the territory of the other state if four conditions are met.
The first concerns jurisdiction: the court of origin must have had jurisdiction under the private international law rules of the country where the decision is relied upon. The wording deserves careful attention, as it differs from other conventions. There is no closed list of jurisdictional heads here, unlike the Franco-Tunisian convention of 28 June 1972. The French court applies its own rules of indirect international jurisdiction, meaning it checks for a characterised connection between the dispute and Morocco, and the absence of fraud in the choice of forum. This gives the creditor more flexibility, but also gives the court more latitude.
The second concerns the regularity of proceedings: the parties must have been properly summoned, represented, or declared to be in default. A default judgment is therefore not excluded in principle, but the regularity of service becomes the debtor’s natural line of defence, especially where the debtor was established in France and service had to be carried out abroad.
The third concerns the authority of the decision: it must have become final and be capable of enforcement under the law of the country where it was rendered. The two limbs are cumulative. A decision carrying provisional enforcement but still open to appeal does not clear this hurdle.
The fourth concerns public policy: the decision must contain nothing contrary to the public policy or principles of public law of the country where enforcement is sought. This is the condition that generates disputes, and we return to it below.
3. Public policy, the only real battleground
In commercial matters, French international public policy rarely operates against a Moroccan decision. The classic grounds for refusal lie elsewhere: punitive damages disproportionate to the loss, an award obtained in violation of the rights of the defence, a decision irreconcilable with an earlier French judgment. An order to pay the price, interest and costs raises no difficulty in principle.
The sensitive ground concerns personal status, and it regularly spills over into financial matters. The first civil chamber of the Cour de cassation held, in two published rulings of 17 February 2004, appeals no. 01-11.549 and 02-11.618, that a foreign decision recording a husband’s unilateral repudiation, without giving any legal effect to a possible objection by the wife and depriving the authority seised of any power other than to arrange the financial consequences of the breakup, is contrary to the principle of equality between spouses on dissolution of marriage, recognised by article 5 of Protocol No. 7 to the European Convention on Human Rights, where the wife, if not both spouses, were domiciled in France. These rulings were rendered under the Franco-Algerian convention of 27 August 1964, but the reasoning applies identically under the public policy reservation of article 16 of the Franco-Moroccan convention.
One should, however, be careful not to draw a general rule about Morocco from this. Morocco’s 2004 Family Code brought divorce under judicial control and created divorce for discord, available to both spouses and pronounced by the court after an attempt at conciliation. A recent Moroccan decision rendered on that basis has nothing of a unilateral repudiation about it and does not call for the same reservation. The analysis is therefore made in light of the reasoning of the decision produced, not in light of the country it comes from. That is exactly what the two 2004 rulings did, by examining the grounds relied upon by the court of origin.
4. Recognition as of right and exequatur: article 17
Recognition as of right under article 16 means the Moroccan judgment has res judicata effect in France without any formality. It can be raised as a bar to a new claim, it can support a defence, it stands as an established fact. It gives it no enforceable force whatsoever.
Article 17 says so unambiguously: no enforcement, and no public formality such as registration or transcription on a register, may take place without a prior declaration of exequatur. A bailiff will therefore carry out no seizure on the mere production of the Moroccan decision, and the land registry office will refuse any registration. A creditor who thinks it holds a title because its judgment is final in Morocco is mistaken about the stage it is at.
Article 20 specifies that the exequatur decision takes effect as between all parties to the proceedings and over the entire territory. A single decision is therefore enough to seize an account in Paris, premises in Lyon and receivables in Marseille.
5. The French procedure and the further-appeal lock
Article 18 refers to the law of the state addressed: exequatur is granted, at the request of any interested party, by the authority with jurisdiction under the law of the country where enforcement is sought. In France, the application falls to the judicial court, seised by summons. Representation by a lawyer is mandatory: article 760 of the Code of Civil Procedure requires appointing a lawyer before the judicial court, and exequatur is not among the exemptions listed in article 761. A creditor cannot file the application itself, however well prepared its case, which is why the preparatory work done in Morocco matters as much as the French proceedings themselves. The choice of court, between that of the defendant’s domicile and that of the place where enforcement is contemplated, is not neutral: applying to the court for the district where the premises to be sold are located simplifies what follows.
Article 19 sets the scope of review and contains two rules the creditor must know before paying for a summons to be issued. The first is that the court examines the conditions of article 16 on its own motion: there is no review on the merits, and a debtor who comes to argue in Paris that the goods were defective is arguing before the wrong court, since those arguments belonged to the remedies available in Morocco. The second is more formidable: exequatur cannot be granted if a further appeal to the Moroccan Cour de cassation has been lodged against the decision. A pending further appeal before the Moroccan Cour de cassation therefore blocks the French proceedings, even though the decision may otherwise be final within the meaning of article 16. This must be checked before incurring costs, not discovered at the hearing.
The same article 19, however, allows a partial exequatur, for one or another head of the decision alone. Where one head of the award is open to challenge under public policy while the principal claim raises no difficulty, it is better to request this partial exequatur as an alternative from the summons onward, rather than let the debtor argue that one questionable head makes the whole unenforceable.
6. The documents required by article 21, and the end of legalisation
Article 21 lists what the party relying on recognition or seeking enforcement must produce: an exemplification of the decision, the original service document, a certificate from the competent court registry certifying that no opposition, appeal, or further appeal exists against the decision, a certified copy of the summons where the defendant did not appear, and a complete translation of these documents, certified by a sworn translator.
The registry certificate is the document creditors underestimate, because it looks administrative when in fact it carries a substantive condition. It must establish that the decision has become final, which requires that the time limits have run, and therefore that service was properly made. Where the debtor is established in France, this service had to be carried out abroad and its regularity must be proven. This is where cases are lost, not on the merits. The first civil chamber of the Cour de cassation firmly recalled this in a published ruling of 4 January 2017, appeal no. 15-27.466: citing article 21(c) of the convention, together with its articles 16(c) and 19, it overturned a decision that had relied merely on a Moroccan consular certificate, whereas only the certificate from the competent court registry could establish the absence of opposition, appeal, and further appeal. A consular certificate, however official, did not replace this document.
On the form of documents, the context has changed and many practitioners are still unaware of it. Morocco acceded on 27 November 2015 to the Hague Convention of 5 October 1961 abolishing the requirement of legalisation for foreign public documents, which entered into force for it on 14 August 2016. Moroccan decisions and public documents now circulate under an apostille, which avoids the consular chain and considerably shortens preparation of the file. On translation, certification follows French rules: a translator listed with a court of appeal. A translation made in Casablanca will routinely be challenged, and it is cheaper to have it redone than to argue over it.
7. What the 1957 convention offers that few people use
This is where the Franco-Moroccan convention stands out clearly, for example from the Franco-Tunisian convention, which is silent on these questions.
Article 22 extends the mechanism to arbitral awards: they can be recognised and declared enforceable if they satisfy the conditions of article 16, following the forms provided for judicial decisions. This should not, however, be seen as a mandatory and unfavourable regime. France and Morocco are both parties to the New York Convention of 10 June 1958, whose article VII reserves the right to rely on the more favourable regime. French international arbitration law, articles 1514 and following of the Code of Civil Procedure, is markedly more liberal: exequatur on application, without adversarial debate, the debtor’s remedy confined to the five grounds of article 1520, and no requirement for a certificate of no remaining appeal. A creditor holding an award rendered in Morocco therefore has an interest in basing its application on that regime, and mentioning article 22 only as an alternative.
Article 23 is the one that is least expected. Notarial and other authentic instruments, enforceable in one of the two countries, are declared enforceable in the other by the competent authority, which verifies only their authenticity and the absence of contrariety to public policy. In other words, a Moroccan notarial deed acknowledging a debt can become an enforceable title in France, without a trial on the merits, with review confined to two points. For a creditor who took the precaution of having its claim notarised in Morocco, this is a far faster route than an action on the merits followed by exequatur of the judgment.
Article 24 completes the framework on the side of securities: contractual mortgages and deeds of consent to their cancellation must be made enforceable before being registered. This confirms, by implication, that registration is possible once exequatur has been obtained, and that the question must be anticipated when the security is granted.
Two further points close Title II. Article 25 rules out any nationality requirement: the convention applies whatever the parties’ nationality, which benefits a third-country national holding a Moroccan judgment. Article 26 extends it to commercial companies lawfully constituted and having their registered office in either country.
8. From exequatur to seizure
Once exequatur has been obtained, the Moroccan decision becomes a French enforceable title and opens every enforcement route under the Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures: third-party seizure of bank accounts, seizure of the debtor’s claims against its own customers, seizure and sale of movable property, seizure of the premises as real property, registration of a mortgage. The practical starting point is the date of exequatur, not that of the Moroccan judgment.
Several months elapse between the moment the creditor discovers the French assets and the moment it obtains exequatur, during which a forewarned debtor organises its insolvency. A safeguard exists, independent of the convention: protective measures, authorised by the enforcement judge on the mere showing of a claim that appears well-founded in principle and circumstances threatening its recovery. An account frozen before the exequatur summons is worth more than a perfect title over an empty estate.
The firm has brought together, in a practical guide on exequatur and enforcement of foreign decisions, every check to carry out on a foreign title before starting any proceedings in France, with the documents to gather depending on the applicable regime and the real timeframes observed before the French courts. Its page on enforcement of foreign judgments describes how it handles these matters, and the contact form allows a case to be outlined in a few lines.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which convention applies to a Moroccan commercial judgment?
The one of 5 October 1957, published by decree no. 60-11 of 12 January 1960, whose Title II is devoted to exequatur in civil and commercial matters. The convention of 10 August 1981 concerns only personal status and family matters: relying on it for a commercial claim invites an unnecessary dispute. In a mixed case, it is safer to base the application on both texts, as primary and subsidiary grounds.
Does a further appeal before the Moroccan Cour de cassation block exequatur?
Yes. Article 19 of the convention provides that exequatur cannot be granted if a further appeal has been lodged against the decision. This is a peculiarity of this text, and it is surprising, since the decision may otherwise have become final within the meaning of article 16. This is precisely what the registry certificate under article 21(c) verifies, since it must certify that no opposition, appeal, or further appeal exists against the decision, as the first civil chamber held on 4 January 2017, appeal no. 15-27.466, published. This must therefore be checked in Morocco before suing in France, failing which the proceedings are commenced for nothing.
Do Moroccan documents still need to be legalised?
No, the apostille has replaced legalisation. Morocco acceded on 27 November 2015 to the Hague Convention of 5 October 1961, which entered into force for it on 14 August 2016. Moroccan decisions and public documents therefore now circulate under an apostille. Translation remains necessary and must be certified under French rules, by a translator listed with a court of appeal.
Can a Moroccan notarial deed serve as an enforceable title in France?
Yes, and this is a valuable peculiarity of the 1957 convention. Its article 23 provides that authentic instruments enforceable in one of the two countries are declared enforceable in the other, the competent authority verifying only their authenticity and the absence of contrariety to public policy. A notarial deed acknowledging a debt therefore avoids a trial on the merits. Article 24 adds that contractual mortgages must be made enforceable before being registered.
Does an arbitral award rendered in Morocco follow the convention?
Article 22 allows it, but it is not the most favourable route. Since France and Morocco are parties to the New York Convention of 1958, whose article VII reserves the benefit of the more favourable regime, the creditor has an interest in relying on articles 1514 and following of the Code of Civil Procedure: exequatur on application, without adversarial debate, no certificate of no remaining appeal, and the debtor’s remedy confined to the five grounds of article 1520.
On the same subject, from North America: enforcing a Canadian or Quebec judgment in France; on the Maghreb: enforcing a Tunisian judgment in France; on the EU regime: enforcing a German judgment in France; on urgent measures: can the debtor’s assets be secured in France before exequatur; from the debtor’s side: challenging exequatur of a foreign judgment; on assets: attaching a bank account in France and seizing real property in France; on arbitration: exequatur of an arbitral award; and for the overall framework, the six points that determine whether a foreign title will be enforceable; on francophone Africa: enforcing an OHADA judgment or a CCJA ruling in France; on Algeria: enforcing an Algerian judgment in France.