French maritime law knows not one contract but some fifteen distinct contracts, each with its own regime, its own compensation cap and its own time bar. And the judge is never bound by the name the parties gave their agreement. An operator who believes it signed a charterparty, where its terms are the law of the parties, may find itself bound by a contract of carriage, where a block of statutory nullities wipes out half its clauses. Characterisation is therefore not an academic preliminary: it decides what the contractual defence is worth on the day of the casualty. Here are the six points that determine, in practice, which regime applies to your contract and what it will cost you.
1. The most expensive dividing line separates chartering from carriage
This is the distinction that governs everything else. Article L. 5423-1 of the French Transport Code provides that the chartering provisions are suppletive of the parties’ intention: the charterparty is the law of the parties, and negotiated clauses take full effect. Article L. 5422-15 does exactly the opposite for carriage, voiding any clause that exonerates the carrier from liability, reverses the burden of proof or lowers the statutory compensation cap. Same ship, same cargo, same voyage: two regimes with nothing in common. A shipowner who carefully negotiated its exonerations in a document recharacterised as a contract of carriage discovers that those clauses are deemed unwritten, and that it answers under a regime it did not choose. The drafting of the initial document is therefore worth more than any later litigation strategy.
2. The judge recharacterises, whatever heading the parties chose
Naming a contract is never enough to characterise it. The Cour de cassation has held that a document headed “detalles de reserva” could amount to a booking agreement treated as a contract of carriage, with all the consequences of regime that follow (Cass. com., 6 January 2021, no. 18-15.228). Conversely, a towage agreement escapes the carriage regime whatever the appearances (Cass. com., 21 June 1983, no. 82-10.418). The judge reasons on the real economy of the agreement: who has nautical management, who has commercial management, which document was issued, and to whom. The practical consequence is that a form reused from a previous transaction, without checking the real structure of the new one, exposes the parties to a recharacterisation no one anticipated and which comes to light once the casualty has already occurred.
3. Time limits are short, and their starting point is debated more than their length
The subject is governed by short limitation periods that do not overlap. One year against the carrier under Article L. 5422-18, one year for actions arising from chartering but with a right to shorten by agreement, one year against the ship’s agent under Article L. 5413-5, two years in towage under Article L. 5342-6, and two years in insurance under Article L. 172-31 of the Insurance Code. The difficulty is not knowing these lengths but identifying their starting point. The Cour de cassation has held that the delivery which triggers the one-year time bar is not the same as handing over to the stevedore, even one holding a monopoly (Cass. com., 24 May 2023, no. 21-15.151). Between discharge, handover to the warehouse keeper and actual delivery to the consignee, several weeks may pass, and it is in that interval that the admissibility of the action is decided.
4. The cap depends on the version of the convention the Paramount clause refers to
The recoverable amount is not read in the contract but in the text it refers to. Under the original Brussels Convention, limitation is expressed in gold pounds per package or unit, the assessment of the number of packages falling within the sovereign power of the trial judges (Cass. com., 21 May 2025, no. 24-11.519). Under the convention as amended by the 1968 and 1979 protocols, the cap is 666.67 units of account per package or 2 units of account per kilogramme, whichever is higher (Cass. com., 24 May 2023, no. 21-19.835). The Paramount clause of the bill of lading therefore alone decides a ratio of one to several dozen between two possible compensations. The carrier loses this benefit only in the two cases provided by Article L. 5422-14: personal intentional or reckless fault, which is hard to establish, and a declaration of value inserted in the bill of lading and accepted by it.
5. The electronic bill of lading has entered the Code; the forms have not followed
Dematerialisation is no longer a tolerated practice but a written regime. Article L. 5422-3 of the Transport Code, from Law no. 2024-537 of 13 June 2024, has admitted the electronic form of the bill of lading since 14 March 2025, Decree no. 2025-811 of 12 August 2025 specifying the reliable method required to guarantee the identification and integrity of the document. In the same movement, the ship mortgage left the Customs Code for the Transport Code on 1 May 2026, in new Articles L. 5114-6-1 to L. 5114-6-10, by Ordinance no. 2026-265 of 8 April 2026. Practitioners working from old templates therefore cite texts that have been moved or repealed, and their formal clauses make no provision for the electronic document. Checking the statutory references has become a review point in its own right.
6. The cost of war and the cost of carbon are allocated by the contract, or by chance
Two new burdens weigh on operations and have no satisfactory default rule. The CONWARTIME 2013 and VOYWAR 2013 war risk clauses, still incorporated in NYPE 2015 and GENCON 2022, were replaced by 2025 versions adopted on 9 April 2025. On carbon, the EU Emissions Trading System has required full surrender of emissions since 2026, and Regulation (EU) 2023/1805, known as FuelEU Maritime, adds a greenhouse gas intensity constraint on the energy used on board, whatever the flag. In both cases the penalty falls on the company, which must pass it on by contract, the directive moreover expressly recognising that it must be able to claim reimbursement from the entity responsible for the decisions affecting emissions. Signing a 2015 form in 2026 without a rider means leaving these two costs where the accident of the texts placed them.
These six points form the review grid for a maritime contract before signature, from the choice of structure to the pass-through clauses. The firm’s practical guide to maritime contracts covers the fifteen or so contracts of the subject, the map of mandatory and suppletive regimes, the characterisation boundary and the clauses to update in 2026. Get the maritime contracts guide. For a current matter, the maritime law page sets out the firm’s working method, the charterparty disputes page details the litigation of charterparties, and the contact form allows you to describe a specific situation.
For the carriage side of the question, our page on the bill of lading sets out the carrier’s liability regime, the one-year time bar and the limitation of liability.
On a neighbouring regime, from the side of the transport document and the carrier’s liability: the bill of lading, evidential value, third-party holder and electronic format.