In the absence of any contrary provisions included in the terms and conditions of sale, or agreed upon by the parties, the payment period in principle is still set within 30 days of receipt of the goods or the performance of the contract.

In some sectors, which may be particularly affected by the seasons, exceptional payment periods may be agreed upon. A decree published on 16 November 2015 established a list of these sectors and the payment periods not to exceed for each of them. Those sectors are: agricultural equipment, sports equipment, leather, watchmaking, jewellery, gold- and silversmiths’ trade and the toy industry.

Although payment periods among professionals are more and more controlled, it is found that payment delays are continually increasing. According to the press conference held by the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Digital on 23 November 2015, only a third of all French companies pay all their invoices on time. Consequently, the Ministry announced that reducing the payment period is one of the priorities in its policy and has just announced new measures aimed at strengthening controls and applicable penalties and in particular by :

• increasing the penalties by raising the current ceiling for legal persons from 375,000 Euros to 2 million Euros ;

• enabling the administration (DGCCRF - Directorate-General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Prevention of Fraud) to impose and enforce several fines against companies after several violations ;

• ensuring the transparency of the penalties by generalizing the disclosure of the penalties applied in accordance with the American concept of « name and shame ».

On that point, the names of the five companies which have been given the biggest administrative penalties during controls performed in 2015 were published on the DGCCRF website. The DGCCRF gave a fine of 375,000 Euros to three companies (NUMERICABLE, SFR and AIRBUS HELICOPTERS), which is the current maximum fine.

Finally, the minister of Economy, Industry and Digital announced that in order to strengthen the transparency of payment periods, the companies’ management report will from now on be establishing the payments delays at the date of closure of the accounts, both on the customer and supplier sides and that this information will be certified by the Statutory Auditors. Currently, only the information about the supplier’s payment periods is indicated in the management report.

Since the regulations concerning the payment periods are of public order, they are applied, according to the Administration, both to relations between French customers and suppliers and to international contracts provided that either the customer or the supplier is located in France.

Therefore, in regards to the increased risk of controls and penalties, a particularly close attention should be paid to meet these deadlines and to ensure that the applicable terms of payment comply with the regulations in force.