Dénonciation Calomnieuse: False Accusation Law in France (Art. 226-10)

When a false accusation lands in France, most people reach first for diffamation and discover a hard wall: the loi du 29 juillet 1881 on press freedom gives a defamation victim only three months to act, and after that window closes the door is usually shut for good. What far fewer people know is that a different offence can still be open long after that. A deliberately false accusation aimed at getting someone punished is a separate crime, dénonciation calomnieuse (calumnious denunciation), and it lives in the Code pénal rather than the 1881 press law.

That distinction is not a technicality. Dénonciation calomnieuse carries neither the three-month clock of the 1881 law nor its unforgiving procedural formalism, so it can be the route that remains available to a victim for whom diffamation is already time-barred. This page explains what the offence is under Article 226-10 of the Code pénal, the penalty it carries, how a court establishes that the accusation was false, and why the timing rules make it worth understanding as a distinct path.

Information last verified on 22 July 2026. This page presents general legal information, not legal advice.

What Article 226-10 actually requires

Article 226-10 of the Code pénal, in force in its current wording, defines the offence through a tight set of elements that all have to be present together. Missing any one of them means there is no dénonciation calomnieuse, however unpleasant the accusation was.

First, there must be a denunciation directed against a determined person. A vague grievance about an unnamed group does not qualify; the accusation has to single out an identifiable individual.

Second, the accused fact must be one that is liable to trigger a judicial, administrative or disciplinary sanction. In other words, the accusation has to describe something that could get the person prosecuted, fined, sacked or otherwise formally punished, not merely something embarrassing.

Third, the accuser must have known the fact to be wholly or partly inaccurate. This is the mental element, and it is decisive. An honest mistake made in good faith is not the offence; the law targets someone who denounces while knowing the accusation is false.

Fourth, the denunciation has to be addressed to a person able to act on it. The statute lists a judicial officer or judicial or administrative police officer, an authority with power to follow it up or to refer it to the competent authority, or the accused persons hierarchical superiors or employer. A false accusation whispered to a neighbour who can do nothing about it falls outside this offence, though it may be diffamation instead.

The penalty

Dénonciation calomnieuse is punished by five years imprisonment and a 45,000 EUR fine. That is a serious tariff, well above the fines that attach to press-law diffamation, and it reflects that the wrong here is not just harm to reputation but the deliberate misuse of public authority against an innocent person.

Those figures are ceilings, not tariffs a court is obliged to impose. As with any offence, the sentence actually handed down depends on the facts, the harm caused and the accuser conduct, and a court can impose far less.

How a court establishes that the accusation was false

Falsity is the heart of the case, and the Code pénal sets out two paths to it. The first is conclusive. Where a final decision of acquittement (acquittal), relaxe (discharge) or non-lieu (dismissal) has declared that the accused fact was not committed, or that it is not attributable to the person who was accused, the falsity of that fact is established as a matter of law. The judge trying the accuser does not reopen the question.

The second path applies in every other case. Where there has been no such final decision resolving the point, the court hearing the prosecution against the accuser assesses the accuracy of the accusation itself, weighing the evidence in the ordinary way. A prosecutor closing a file with a classement sans suite, for instance, is not the same as a final ruling that the fact never happened, so in that situation the court still has to decide the truth for itself.

There is also a sequencing rule worth knowing: where the accused fact has itself led to criminal proceedings, the case against the accuser generally cannot be decided until the proceedings about the accused fact have been finally resolved. The system waits to see whether the underlying accusation stands before punishing the person who made it.

The timing advantage that makes this route matter

Here is the point that competitor pages almost never make plainly. Diffamation lives in the loi du 29 juillet 1881, and Article 65 of that law gives a victim only three months from publication to launch a prosecution. The 1881 law also imposes a strict procedural formalism on the opening act, and getting it wrong can sink the case on its own. Miss the three months, and a diffamation claim is usually finished.

Dénonciation calomnieuse is not in the 1881 law at all. It is an ordinary offence of the Code pénal, classified as a delit, so it runs on the general prescription in the Code de procédure pénale. Under Article 8, the public action for a delit prescribes after six years from the day the offence was committed. It also uses the ordinary criminal-complaint procedure rather than the 1881 law special formalism.

For a victim who was falsely accused to an authority and who let the three-month diffamation window lapse, that difference can be the whole case. Where the facts fit Article 226-10, a route may still be open years after the point at which a diffamation claim would have died. This is why the offence is worth knowing as a distinct option and not just a footnote to defamation. It is not a universal substitute, because the elements are narrower, but where they are met the longer window is real.

If your underlying problem is a public or private imputation harming your honour rather than a false accusation made to an authority, the diffamation analysis is the right starting point, and our page on defamation under French law sets it out, while the line between an insult and a defamatory statement is covered on insult versus defamation.

Dénonciation calomnieuse, diffamation and dénonciation mensongère

Three offences sit close together here and are easy to confuse, so it helps to separate them cleanly.

Diffamation, under the loi du 29 juillet 1881, is the allegation or imputation of a fact that harms the honour or consideration of a person. It protects reputation, it can be public or private, and it runs on the three-month press-law clock. The accusation does not have to be aimed at any authority.

Dénonciation calomnieuse, under Article 226-10 of the Code pénal, targets a false accusation deliberately routed to someone with power to sanction the accused, of a fact liable to bring a judicial, administrative or disciplinary sanction. The wrong is weaponising authority against an innocent person, and it carries the five-year and 45,000 EUR ceiling described above.

Dénonciation mensongère, under Article 434-26 of the Code pénal, is different again. It punishes falsely reporting to a judicial or administrative authority facts that would constitute a crime or delit and that exposed the authorities to useless investigations, and it is punished by six months imprisonment and a 7,500 EUR fine. Its focus is the waste of the justice systems resources, and it can apply even where no particular person was targeted. Do not treat the three as interchangeable; the choice of offence turns on who the accusation named, who it was sent to, and what it exposed the system to.

How and when to act

Because dénonciation calomnieuse is an ordinary Code pénal offence, it is pursued through the ordinary criminal-complaint machinery rather than the special press-law procedure. A victim files a plainte in the normal way, and the general mechanics of doing that, including filing with the procureur de la République and the constitution de partie civile route, are set out on our guide to filing a criminal complaint in France.

Where the false accusation was made in the course of, or alongside, a wider defamation problem, it can be worth mapping both the 1881 route and the Code pénal route before deciding, and our page on filing a defamation complaint walks through the press-law path and its short deadline. The broader French defamation law hub links the surrounding topics, and our general France legal guide sets the wider context.

Two practical cautions follow from the elements. Because the mental element requires that the accuser knew the fact was false, a claim that turns only on someone having been wrong, rather than dishonest, is unlikely to succeed. And because falsity is conclusively established by a final acquittement, relaxe or non-lieu, the timing of any parallel proceedings about the accused fact can shape when a dénonciation calomnieuse case can realistically be decided.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is dénonciation calomnieuse in French law?

It is the offence at Article 226-10 of the Code pénal: a false accusation directed at a determined person, of a fact liable to trigger a judicial, administrative or disciplinary sanction, made to an authority able to act on it or to the accused persons employer or hierarchical superior, where the accuser knew the fact to be wholly or partly false. It is punished by up to five years imprisonment and a 45,000 EUR fine.

How is a false accusation different from diffamation?

Diffamation, under the loi du 29 juillet 1881, protects reputation against a fact-based imputation harming honour, and it must be pursued within three months. Dénonciation calomnieuse, under the Code pénal, targets a false accusation routed to an authority with power to sanction the accused. Because it is not a press-law offence, it runs on the ordinary six-year prescription, not the three-month clock.

Can I use it after the three-month defamation deadline has passed?

Sometimes. Dénonciation calomnieuse is an ordinary Code pénal delit with a six-year prescription under Article 8 of the Code de procédure pénale, so it can remain available long after a diffamation claim would be time-barred. It is not a universal substitute, because the elements are narrower, but where the facts fit Article 226-10 the longer window is genuinely open.

How does a court decide that the accusation was false?

Where a final decision of acquittement, relaxe or non-lieu found the accused fact was not committed or not attributable to the person, falsity is conclusively established and the judge does not reopen it. In every other case, such as after a classement sans suite, the court trying the accuser weighs the truth of the accusation itself on the evidence.

Is dénonciation calomnieuse the same as dénonciation mensongère?

No. Dénonciation mensongère, under Article 434-26 of the Code pénal, punishes falsely reporting a crime or delit that exposed the authorities to useless investigations, and it carries six months imprisonment and a 7,500 EUR fine. Its concern is wasted investigative effort, not a targeted false accusation of a named person addressed to someone able to sanction them.