All publications by Sophie Hosri

Seeking to ensure the survival of companies that could become insolvent in the coming months due to the phasing-out of the support measures that have been put in place, the French legislator has adopted a Law introducing a new procedure, i.e., the judicial crisis recovery management procedure.

This temporary procedure is of particular interest to debtors who may be experiencing short-term difficulties caused by the COVID-19 health crisis and who wish to benefit from a simple and rapid mechanism for spreading out their current liabilities over a long period of time.

The French Anticorruption Agency (Agence Française Anticorruption, hereinafter “AFA”) published its 2020 annual report in March 2021.

This provides the opportunity to review the key figures of its audit activities in one infographic, four years after its creation by the Law of December 9, 2016 on transparency, fight against corruption and modernization of economic life, known as the “Sapin II” Law.

While these figures help us identify a trend concerning the types of audits carried out and the entities concerned, the AFA could in the future extend these audits by deciding to subject more companies to the compliance scheme, as it seems to envisage in its latest guidelines.

Pursuant to Article 35 of the Brussels I recast Regulation, the local judge may order provisional or protective measures, even though another judge has been given – or has accepted – jurisdiction to rule on the merits of the case, in particular under the terms of a jurisdiction clause.

In a decision handed down on January 27, 2021, the Court de Cassation (French Supreme Court) ruled on the French judge’s power to order preparatory inquiries in futurum (literally for the future) and aligned its position with the autonomous notion of “provisional, including protective, measures” provided for by European Law.