Casier Judiciaire B2: Who Really Sees Your French Criminal Record

Bulletin n° 2 is the extract of the French criminal record that decides things. It is the one consulted when a préfecture examines a naturalisation file, when a candidate is recruited into the fonction publique, when a professional body considers whether someone may practise, and when an authority weighs an application for a licence or an agrement. It is also the one nobody can ever hand you a copy of, which is why so much confusion surrounds it.

The single most useful thing to understand about the B2 is that it is not a document that circulates. It is a message that travels along a fixed administrative route, from the Casier judiciaire national to an authority the law has named, and it stops there. A reader who believes an employer can demand their B2 will end up volunteering information nobody was entitled to ask for. This page sets out who actually receives a bulletin n° 2, which posts and procedures trigger one, what has already fallen off it by operation of law, and the two statutory mechanisms for having a conviction taken off it for good.

Information last verified on 21 July 2026. This page presents general legal information, not legal advice.

What a bulletin n° 2 is

The casier judiciaire is a single national file. Bulletin n° 2 is a filtered read of that file, sitting between the complete bulletin n° 1, which goes only to judicial authorities, and the narrow bulletin n° 3, which is the only extract an individual can obtain about themselves. The three are compared side by side on our page explaining the French casier judiciaire.

CPP Article 775 defines the B2 negatively. Rather than listing what appears, it lists what is left out, and the list runs to more than a dozen categories.

Out go convictions and findings of guilt with dispense de peine handed down against minors, and convictions expressly excluded by a court under Article 775-1. Out go contraventions de police, convictions covered by a sursis that has done its work, subject to exceptions where socio-judicial supervision or a ban on activity involving minors was imposed, and convictions that have been rehabilitated, whether automatically or judicially.

Out too go decisions depriving a person of parental authority, expulsion orders that have been repealed or withdrawn, penal compositions, forfait amendes, and most offences under Title IV of Book IV of the Code de commerce unless the judge orders otherwise. And sentences imposed without sursis under Code pénal Articles 131-5 to 131-11, the alternative and complementary penalties, drop off after five years from the day the conviction became final, or three years for a jours-amende. Where nothing at all survives that filter, the bulletin is issued carrying the word Neant.

The routing rule, stated plainly

The B2 is not a certificate you obtain and present. It is issued by the Casier judiciaire national directly to an authority that has the legal right to receive it, for a purpose the law recognises.

You cannot request your own. There is no form, no fee and no service for it, because the law does not contemplate delivery to the person concerned. An employer cannot request one either, in the ordinary case. Where a check is permitted at all in the private sector, the request is made by a public authority and the bulletin is delivered to that authority, not to the company.

Who actually receives a bulletin n° 2

The official list of recipients is administrative rather than commercial, and reading it tells you a great deal about when a B2 is likely to be in play in your own situation.

Prefects and state public administrations receive B2s in connection with the decisions they take, which is the channel through which naturalisation files, residence matters, licences and agrements are checked. Military authorities receive them for armed forces recruitment.

Professional oversight bodies receive them when examining whether a conviction restricts the right to practise, the medical, dental, midwifery and pharmacy orders among them. Commercial court judges receive them for applications concerning the trade register, and presidents of departmental councils for adoption approval applications.

Electoral authorities receive them where voting rights are challenged and to check that a candidate is not under a sentence of ineligibility. The state services responsible for policing weapons and explosives receive them, and so do the commissions that certify statutory auditors, the commissaires aux comptes.

The one private-sector opening: work with minors

There is a single well-defined case in which a private organisation is in the loop at all. The heads of public or private bodies carrying on a cultural, educational or social activity involving minors may have a B2 checked, and only for recruitment to posts that bring the person into contact with those minors. Even then, the employer never applies to the Casier judiciaire national itself. The request goes through a designated administrative authority, typically the departmental services responsible for youth matters, and that authority receives the bulletin.

What happens next depends on what is on it. Under CPP Article 776 the employer may be sent the bulletin only where it carries no mention of any conviction, and only for the needs of the recruitment. Where there are entries, the authority tells the employer just that the bulletin contains a mention and whether it is capable of preventing the recruitment. The employer is never told what the conviction was.

Public-sector recruitment

For entry into the fonction publique the test is written into the Code general de la fonction publique. Article L321-1 provides that a person cannot have the status of fonctionnaire where, as the case may be, the entries carried on bulletin n° 2 of their criminal record are incompatible with the exercise of the functions.

The wording matters. It is not a rule that any conviction disqualifies. It is a compatibility assessment made by the recruiting administration, matching the nature of the entries against the nature of the post, and it sits alongside the other statutory conditions such as civil rights.

That is why an entry genuinely irrelevant to a given post does not necessarily end an application, and why an entry that has already dropped off the B2 under Article 775 is not part of the assessment at all.

Naturalisation and immigration files

Naturalisation brings the largest number of people to this question, and the governing rule is in the Code civil rather than in criminal procedure. Article 21-27 provides that a person cannot acquire or be reinstated in French nationality if they have been convicted of a crime or delit constituting an attack on the fundamental interests of the nation or an act of terrorism, or, whatever the offence, if they have been sentenced to six months or more of imprisonment without suspension.

The exception in the same article is the part worth reading twice. The bar does not apply to a person who has benefited from réhabilitation de plein droit or réhabilitation judiciaire under Code pénal Article 133-12, nor to a person whose conviction has been excluded from bulletin n° 2 under CPP Articles 775-1 and 775-2.

In other words the two exclusion mechanisms below are not merely cosmetic. In a naturalisation file they can be the difference between an application that is barred by statute and one that is assessed on its merits.

Way out one: exclusion by the court under Article 775-1

The first mechanism is judicial and it is remarkably direct. Under CPP Article 775-1, the court passing sentence may expressly exclude the mention of the conviction from bulletin n° 2, either in the judgment of conviction itself or in a later judgment given on the application of the convicted person.

A later application is heard under the jurisdiction and procedure rules of Articles 702-1 and 703, with the court composed as the final paragraph of Article 702-1 requires. There is no waiting period written into the article, which is what distinguishes this route from both réhabilitation and Article 775-2.

The effect goes well beyond the paperwork. Exclusion of the mention from bulletin n° 2 carries with it the lifting of all prohibitions, disqualifications and incapacities of whatever nature resulting from that conviction.

Two extensions and one exclusion are worth noting. The article applies equally to judgments declaring criminal irresponsibility by reason of mental disorder. A French national convicted by a foreign court may use the same procedure before the tribunal correctionnel of their domicile, or Paris if they live abroad. And the article does not apply to persons convicted of the offences listed in Article 706-47, which covers sexual offences and offences committed against minors.

Way out two: the twenty-year request under Article 775-2

The second mechanism exists for sentences that can never attract automatic réhabilitation, where the passage of time alone would otherwise change nothing.

Article 775-2 allows such a person to obtain exclusion of the mention from bulletin n° 2 on simple request, under the same jurisdiction rules as Article 775-1, once twenty years have elapsed from their final release, or from conditional release that was not followed by révocation. The request is conditional on the person not having been sentenced to any criminal or correctional penalty since that release.

As with Article 775-1, exclusion lifts every prohibition, disqualification and incapacity flowing from the conviction. This is the long-horizon remedy, and it is the reason that even a sentence outside the reach of Article 133-13 is not necessarily a permanent bar.

Réhabilitation, the parallel route

Exclusion under Articles 775-1 and 775-2 is not the only way a conviction leaves bulletin n° 2. Rehabilitated convictions are excluded from the B2 by Article 775 itself, and réhabilitation can arrive automatically after three, five or ten clean years depending on the sentence, or by application to the chambre de l'instruction.

Code pénal Article 133-16 sets out what réhabilitation achieves. It erases all the incapacities and disqualifications resulting from the conviction, though its effects are deferred to the end of the measure where socio-judicial supervision or a ban on activity involving minors was imposed, and by forty years where a permanent complementary prohibition was ordered.

One limit applies to every route on this page. Article 133-16 confirms that réhabilitation does not prevent the judicial authorities, and them alone, taking the conviction into account in later proceedings for the purposes of the rules on legal recidivism. Nothing here erases a conviction from the eyes of a criminal court. The full mechanics of both forms of réhabilitation are set out on our page on the casier judiciaire and its three bulletins, and further French legal guides are collected on our France hub.

Checking your position before it matters

Because no copy of a B2 exists for you to consult, the practical starting point is CPP Article 777-2. Any person proving their identity may ask the procureur de la République at the tribunal judiciaire for the area where they live for communication of the releve integral of the entries concerning them, which is the whole record rather than a filtered extract. The article states that no copy of that releve may be delivered, and that the communication does not constitute notification of decisions that are not final, so it does not open any appeal period. People living abroad go through the competent diplomatic agent or consul.

One protection is worth knowing before you use it. CPP Article 781 punishes by a 7,500 euro fine anyone who gets the person concerned to hand over all or part of the mentions of that releve integral, so it is a document to read for yourself and not one anybody may ask you to produce.

That reading is what lets you work out, before a préfecture or a recruiting body does it for you, whether anything on your record would still show on a bulletin n° 2, and therefore whether an application under Article 775-1 or Article 775-2 is worth making.

A renumbering ahead

Ordonnance n° 2025-1091 of 19 November 2025 rewrites the legislative part of the Code de procédure pénale and comes into force on 1 January 2029, unless it is deferred by decree, which the ordonnance permits up to 1 September 2030. The rewrite is presented as being at constant law, so the mechanisms described here are being renumbered rather than reformed, and the current article numbers remain the ones to cite until then.