Introduction

Proceedings with mandatory representation

Proceedings without mandatory representation

Contentious matters

Scope

Proceedings

Non-contentious matters

Proceedings before full bench

Interim orders

Orders on ex parte application (sur requête)

Powers of the First president

3. Proceedings before the Court of Appeal

Embodiment of the principle of a two-tier system of jurisdiction, the Court of Appeal constitutes the second and final level of jurisdiction to rule on fact and law. An ordinary or “civil law” (ordinaire or droit commun) remedy, as opposed to extraordinary remedies, in the sense of exceptional, which include third-party opposition, application for judicial review, and appeal to the Court of Cassation, an appeal constitutes, pursuant to Article 542 of the Code of Civil Procedure, a means of revision or annulment of the judgment rendered by a first-degree court. The appeal is a means of reformation in that it allows a higher-order court to review the judgment of a first-instance court on both legal and factual questions; it constitutes a means of annulment when it seeks to challenge the formal regularity of the decision or the procedure of the first degree.

The concept of appeal in French law has oscillated between two opposing approaches to this remedy. Traditionally, in Roman law, appeal was seen as a “means of reformation” limited to reviewing what had already been judged at first instance. In contrast, in Germanic law, appeal was synonymous with a second first instance capable of accommodating modifications to the dispute, such as new claims. According to this very broad conception of appeal, it constituted a means of potentially re-judging the case and, therefore, “a means of completing the dispute.” While traditionally considered in French law as a means of reformation, appeal became a means of completing the dispute due to Decree No 72-788 of 28 August 1972, driven by the need to adapt to potential developments in the dispute for quality justice and the desire to avoid fragmentation of res judicata without benefit to civil proceedings. However, far from achieving more efficient justice and the expected procedural gains, the implementation of this decree led to a slowdown in proceedings and congestion in the courts of appeal, a phenomenon exacerbated over the past forty years by a succession of ad hoc reforms of civil procedure without consideration of the overall judicial chain.

In 2008, observing in practice that the appeal instance is the place “where for the first time a structure of facts is truly judged, which has not been entirely submitted to the first court or which, due to the time elapsed, has changed in nature,” and consequently, the slowing down of the procedure and the resulting complexity of the trial, the Magendie II report  proposes to more strictly regulate the appeal, conceived as a means of completion, and to reform the appeal procedure to accelerate the pace of civil proceedings before this court. This results today in a hybrid conception of the appeal, between a means of reformation and completion, specific to the French system.

From which will directly result Decree No 2009-1524 of 9 December 2009 concerning the appeal procedure with mandatory representation in civil matters, known as the Magendie Decree.

Concept of appeal in French law

The procedure before the Court of Appeal has been the subject of numerous amending legislation. It primarily results from the adoption of Decree No 2009-1524 of 9 December 2009 on the appeal procedure with mandatory representation in civil matters , known as the Magendie Decree, and Decree No 2010-1647 of 28 December 2010 amending the appeal procedure with mandatory representation in civil matters , which came into force on 1 January 2011. Since the Magendie reform, aimed at improving the efficiency of appeal proceedings, the appeal procedure is based on the principle of concentration, previously established by a ruling of the plenary assembly of the Court of Cassation on 7 July 2006 . Consolidation (concentration) in appeal proceedings requires, on the one hand, consolidation of written submissions, particularly arguments , according to in accordance with strict formal requirements and within a limited number of acts, under penalty of inadmissibility, and on the other hand, a compressed trial in terms of very short deadlines, strictly sanctioned, for swift justice. This was followed by Law No 2011-94 of 25 January 2011 on the reform of representation before the Courts of Appeal  and Decree No 2012-634 of 3 May 2012 on the merger of the professions of lawyer and solicitor at the Courts of Appeal , which abolished the profession of solicitor at the Courts of Appeal.

The subsequent enactment of Decree No 2017-891 of 6 May 2017 concerning objections to jurisdiction and appeals in civil matters constitutes the second major reform of civil appeal procedures, in the same spirit as the Magendie Decree. This text simplifies the rules governing objections to jurisdiction, restricts the scope of new claims admissible on appeal, and redefines the appeal which, according to Article 542 of the Code of Civil Procedure, now aims “through the critique of the judgment rendered by a first-instance court, at its modification or annulment by the court of appeal.” The decree also reorganizes the devolutive effect of the appeal, which, according to Article 562, “only refers to the court the parts of the judgment it expressly challenges or those that depend on it,” “devolution only occurring in full when the appeal aims at the annulment of the judgment or if the subject matter of the dispute is indivisible,” thus eliminating the previously standard general appeal and further reinforcing the concentration of the appeal proceedings.

Recently, Decree No 2023-1391 of 29 December 2023 was adopted, simplifying the appeal procedure in civil matters . Entered into force on 1 January 2024, it distinguishes provisions related to expedited proceedings from those dedicated to the pre-trial procedure and relaxes formalities by allowing, in particular, the possible regularization of the notice of appeal and the extension of time limits for expedited conclusions. Furthermore, it makes the provisions related to the appeal procedure autonomous by specifically removing references to the rules applicable to the Judicial Court.

Cass. ass. plén., 7 July 2006, LawLex202300010829JBJ: it is incumbent upon the claimant to present, from the proceedings related to the initial claim, all the arguments they consider capable of substantiating it.

Cass. ass. plén., 7 July 2006, LawLex202300010829JBJ: a court of appeal, having noted that the claim brought before it between the same parties, sought the same end as the original claim, was entitled to conclude that the party could not be allowed to dispute the identity of cause between the two claims by relying on a legal basis which it had failed to raise in due time, and that its claim was barred by res judicata in respect of the same dispute.

Successive reforms of the appeal procedure

Between 2007 and 2015, according to the 2017 information report by the senatorial mission, Five Years to Save Justice, new cases brought before the courts of appeal increased by 23.5%, with the year-end case backlog at 26.9%. Starting in 2017, according to Justice Statistical References, the number of new cases began to decrease. However, the average duration of appeal proceedings continued to increase year after year, rising from 11.8 months in 2014 to 14 months in 2019. The report by the General Inspectorate of Justice on appeal procedure reforms, issued in 2019, makes the same observation. While overall the reforms of civil appeals—no fewer than 52 texts since the Magendie Decree—have been an advancement, the objectives of speeding up justice and reducing the backlog of ongoing cases have not been achieved.

Another report entitled “Adaptation of the network of courts” submitted to the Minister of Justice in 2018 recommended, for a more efficient justice system, aligning the judicial organization with the regional level, notably by assigning a Court of Appeal per administrative region a role of regional coordination and leadership, and by distributing certain specialized competencies among the Courts of Appeal in the region, after regional consultation.

The specialization of certain courts, particularly the Courts of Appeal, in specific disputes is one of the avenues for technical improvements in civil appeal procedures. The goal is to consolidate specific or highly technical disputes within a few courts to be handled by expert judges. Article 106 of Law No 2019-222 of 23 March 2019 on the 2018-2022 programming and justice reform provides for a three-year experiment in two regions, involving the special designation of certain Courts of Appeal (covering the jurisdiction of several Courts of Appeal in the same region) to hear appeals against certain first-instance judgments. Decree No 2019-1339 of 11 December 2019 , enacted pursuant to this text, specifies in its Article 1 the list of civil matters for which Courts of Appeal may be specially designated by decree to hear appeals against decisions of first-instance courts, covering the jurisdiction of several Courts of Appeal in the same region. Article 2 of the decree provides for the establishment of a steering committee to monitor the experiment and the preparation of a report by an evaluation committee comprising judges and officials who participated in the experiment and its monitoring, as well as individuals appointed by order of the Minister of Justice. This report aims, in particular, to assess “the results of the experiment in terms of improving the quality of decisions rendered and the timeframes for judgment, and the proper access to justice” and its impact “on the functioning and organization of the courts.” It will “report, if applicable, on the difficulties encountered by the specially designated courts and propose solutions to address them,” noting that “based on this report, the Minister of Justice may propose to generalize all or part of the experiment, extend it, or terminate it.”

The trend towards specialization goes even further, as within the Paris Court of Appeal, which is the largest court of appeal with about 300 judges, experimentation has been extended to dedicate certain disputes to specialized chambers. Thus, in January 2024, within the economic division of the Paris Court of Appeal, Chamber 5-12 was created, specializing in cross-cutting environmental disputes, handling cases related to the duty of vigilance and ecological responsibility. As early as 2017, the Minister of Justice, aiming to adapt the French judicial system to contemporary international economic and legal challenges, had requested the High Legal Committee of the Paris Financial Center (HCJP) to conduct a preliminary mission to define a relevant legal framework, “with a view to the rapid establishment, in specially designated courts, of judgment panels capable of handling technical disputes, applying foreign law, and conducting proceedings in the most efficient conditions, particularly linguistic, to allow, in case of dispute, economic operators to address, in France, courts capable of easily adjudicating in the law they have chosen and in the language of their business relations.” The HCJP report led to the creation of an international chamber within the Paris Court of Appeal. This chamber received legislative recognition with the adoption of Law No 2024-537 of 13 June 2024 aimed at increasing business financing and the attractiveness of France , introducing a new Article L. 311-16-1 into the Code of Judicial Organization, according to which the Paris Court of Appeal includes an international commercial chamber, which handles “appeals for annulment of awards rendered in international arbitration, in the cases and conditions provided by the Code of Civil Procedure” and “appeals against a decision ruling on a request for recognition or enforcement of an award rendered in international arbitration, in the cases and conditions provided by the same code.”

Decree No 2019-1339 of 11 December 2019 regarding the experimentation provided for in Article 106 of Law 2019-222 of 23 March 2019 on the 2018-2022 programming and reform for justice, OJ of 13 December 2019.

3. Proceedings before the Court of Appeal

1. Concept of appeal in French law

2. Successive reforms of the appeal procedure

3. Towards an ever-increasing specialization of courts