France Winter Eviction Ban (Trêve Hivernale): Dates, Exceptions and What It Does Not Stop

A French eviction file does not stop for winter. Only the last step does. Between 1 November and 31 March a commissaire de justice cannot put an occupant out of the dwelling, but the case behind that step keeps moving: the demand can be served, the hearing can be held, the judgment can be handed down, and the arrears keep climbing every month.

That gap between the procedure and its execution is what catches people out on both sides. A tenant who reads the trêve hivernale as five months of amnesty finds a larger debt and an enforceable judgment waiting on 1 April. A landlord who assumes nothing can be done until spring loses five months of procedure. And a handful of situations, including the one most commonly summarised wrongly, sit outside the suspension altogether.

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

The dates and the text behind them

The rule lives in article L412-6 of the Code des procédures civiles d'exécution. Its first alinéa provides that notwithstanding any eviction decision that has become final, and despite the expiry of any délais granted under article L412-3, any eviction measure not executed as at 1 November of each year is stayed until 31 March of the following year.

Service-public.gouv.fr, in its guidance verified on 1 December 2025, confirms that 31 March is included in the protected period and that the same calendar applied for the 2025 to 2026 winter. The dates are statutory. They do not shift with a cold snap and no local authority can move them.

The current wording dates from loi n° 2023-668 du 27 juillet 2023, which rewrote the exceptions with effect from 29 July 2023. Anything written before that date describes a different version of the article.

What is suspended, and what is not

The verb in the statute is "il est sursis", it is stayed. What is stayed is the mesure d'expulsion, the physical removal. Everything upstream of it continues.

A judgment ordering eviction keeps its full force through the winter. A commandement de quitter les lieux may be served, and the two month period it opens under the eviction rules runs during the trêve rather than being frozen by it. The administration confirms that a landlord may seize the juge des contentieux de la protection during the trêve, including by way of référé, and that if the judge orders eviction it becomes effective as soon as the trêve ends.

The debt is untouched as well. Government guidance states plainly that the trêve does not cancel rental debt, it postpones the eviction. Rent, charges and any indemnité d'occupation continue to accrue, and a tenant who stops paying because "nobody can evict me until April" arrives in April owing five months more.

Exception one: rehousing has been arranged

The first exception sits inside the opening sentence of L412-6 itself. The stay applies "à moins que le relogement des intéressés soit assuré dans des conditions suffisantes respectant l'unité et les besoins de la famille", unless rehousing is assured in sufficient conditions respecting the unity and needs of the family.

Service-public.gouv.fr puts the same test in practical terms: where a rehousing solution corresponding to the occupants' needs exists, with a number of rooms matching the number of occupants, eviction can take place all year round once the period to leave has expired.

This is not a vague standard about having somewhere to go. It is about an offer that actually houses the household as a household. An offer that splits a family, or that is plainly too small, is not rehousing in sufficient conditions.

Exception two: entry by voies de fait

The second alinéa of L412-6, in its wording since 29 July 2023, provides that by derogation from the first alinéa the stay does not apply where the eviction measure was ordered because of an entry without right or title into the home of another by means of manoeuvres, threats, voies de fait or coercion.

Two details matter. First, the exception is tied to the reason the eviction was ordered, not to a label attached to the occupant afterwards. Second, service-public.gouv.fr confirms that a home for this purpose includes both a main residence and a second home, so a holiday property is covered.

The third alinéa handles everything else. Where the persons whose eviction was ordered entered somewhere other than a home by those same means, a garage, a workshop, a plot of land, the judge may remove or reduce the benefit of the stay. There the exception is a judicial discretion, not an automatic exclusion. Presenting all squatting cases as automatically outside the trêve overstates the statute for the non domicile category.

Exception three: buildings under a safety order

Government information pages list a third category: occupants of a building covered by a safety order, the arrêté de mise en sécurité that replaced the older arrêté de péril, are not protected by the trêve.

The legal path to that result is worth stating accurately, because the tidy version circulating online is out of date. The péril exception used to be written into article L613-3 of the Code de la construction et de l'habitation, alongside the winter dates themselves. That article was abrogated by ordonnance n° 2011-1895 du 19 décembre 2011 when the material moved into the Code des procédures civiles d'exécution, and the current text of L412-6 does not repeat it.

What operates today is a different mechanism rather than an exception written into L412-6. Under article L511-11 of the Code de la construction et de l'habitation the competent authority may, by arrêté de mise en sécurité or arrêté de traitement de l'insalubrité, order works, order that premises stop being made available for habitation, or prohibit occupation temporarily or permanently. An administrative order to leave an unsafe building is not a mesure d'expulsion stayed by L412-6, so it is not held back by the winter calendar.

The counterweight is that these occupants are not simply put on the street. Where habitation is permanently prohibited, or where the premises must cease to be offered for habitation, article L521-3-1 of the same code places the rehousing obligation on the owner or operator, who must present an offer matching the occupants' needs and possibilities and pay an indemnity equal to three months of the new rent towards reinstallation costs. If the owner defaults, rehousing is arranged under article L521-3-2.

Family law situations the trêve does not cover

Two further cases fall outside the suspension, and both come from the juge aux affaires familiales rather than the housing rules.

Where an ordonnance de protection is issued in a case of violence within a couple, married, pacsés or cohabiting, or violence against a child, the family judge may order the violent person out of the family home. Service-public.gouv.fr confirms that this eviction may be carried out even during the trêve hivernale.

The same applies in divorce proceedings. At the hearing on orientation and provisional measures the family judge may award the use of the home to one spouse and order the other out, and that eviction may likewise be executed during the winter. Where the judge awarded the home without ordering an eviction, the spouse who keeps it must go to the juge des contentieux de la protection to obtain one, and that eviction too may be executed during the trêve.

Energy supply during the same period

The winter protection extends beyond housing. Under article L115-3 of the Code de l'action sociale et des familles, between 1 November and 31 March suppliers of electricity, heat and gas cannot interrupt supply, including by terminating the contract, at a main residence because of unpaid bills.

The protection is not identical for the two energies. An electricity supplier may still apply a réduction de puissance during that period, except for the consumers referred to in article L124-1 of the Code de l'énergie, the chèque énergie beneficiaries. Outside the winter period, supply may only be interrupted after a minimum period of reduced power.

When the trêve ends

From 1 April an eviction that was stayed may be executed. A commissaire de justice must attend on a working day between 6am and 9pm, and is not obliged to give advance notice of the date. Where access is refused, the préfet is asked for the concours de la force publique, and a refusal or delay by the préfecture gives the landlord a claim for compensation against the State rather than restoring any right to the occupant.

Occupants are not without options at that point. A request for additional time may be made to the juge de l'exécution, and the délai de grâce granted can run from one month to one year, the judge taking account of age, state of health and good faith. Conversely, staying on beyond the period allowed, outside the trêve, exposes an occupant in the private sector to a fine of 7,500 euros.

In the overseas départements a trêve cyclonique may apply in addition to the winter one. Its dates vary by département and service-public.gouv.fr directs readers to the relevant préfecture rather than publishing a single calendar.

Where a tenancy is ending rather than failing, the money question is usually the deposit instead, and our guide to the French dépôt de garantie covers the return deadlines and the late return penalty. The rest of the French material sits on our France legal guides hub.

Disclaimer

This page provides general information about the French trêve hivernale for educational purposes. It is not legal advice and it is not an assessment of any reader's own eviction file or tenancy. How the exceptions apply depends on the terms of the judgment, the reason the eviction was ordered and the facts of the individual case. Verify current rules against service-public.gouv.fr or Légifrance, or consult an ADIL adviser or a qualified French avocat, before acting on anything set out here.