The European Account Preservation Order (EAPO) is a European Union procedure, created by Regulation (EU) No 655/2014, that allows a creditor to freeze funds held by a debtor in a bank account maintained in another Member State, up to the amount specified in the order, as a provisional and conservatory measure.

French law calls it the ordonnance européenne de saisie conservatoire des comptes bancaires (OESC).

European Account Preservation Order (EAPO): scope and purpose

Regulation (EU) No 655/2014, establishing a European Account Preservation Order procedure, prevents the subsequent enforcement of a creditor’s claim from being jeopardised through the transfer or withdrawal of funds held in a bank account maintained in a Member State; the order preserves those funds provisionally, up to the amount it specifies, and has applied since 18 January 2017.

The EAPO Regulation aims to facilitate cross-border debt recovery in civil and commercial matters. Its scope covers pecuniary claims in those matters, and only in cross-border cases, meaning that the account to be preserved is maintained in a Member State other than the one whose court is seised, or other than the one where the creditor is domiciled.

The exclusions matter as much as the scope. Matrimonial property, succession, social security and arbitration are out, as are accounts immune from seizure under the law of the State where they are maintained. So are claims against a debtor already subject to insolvency proceedings, an exclusion that is structural for a commercial creditor, since it closes the European route precisely when the debtor starts to fail.

A creditor outside France gains from seeing where the order fits into French enforcement procedures before choosing it.

Every Member State is bound except Denmark, which did not take part under Protocol No 22. Ireland exercised its opt-in and participates. The United Kingdom never took part in the adoption of the Regulation, under Protocol No 21: it did not leave the instrument, it was never inside it.

Eligibility conditions: periculum in mora, and fumus boni iuris only without an enforceable title

Article 7(1) requires the creditor in every case to prove a real risk that enforcement of the claim would otherwise be impeded or made substantially more difficult (the periculum in mora), while Article 7(2) adds the fumus boni iuris only where the creditor holds no enforceable title yet.

The two conditions are not cumulative. Recital 14 requires urgency in all situations, including where the creditor has already obtained a judgment. A prior enforceable title is therefore not a condition of access to the order: it lightens the evidential burden, which is the opposite of what a common-law reader usually expects.

The Court of Justice has drawn the line twice. In K.H.K. (C-555/18) it held that an instrument must be enforceable in the Member State of origin to count as a judgment, court settlement or authentic instrument. In Starkinvest (C-291/21) it held that a decision ordering a penalty payment for a future breach, without fixing the amount, is not a judgment requiring the debtor to pay, so the creditor stays bound by the fumus. That ruling concerned a Belgian penalty payment; by analogy, a French creditor holding an astreinte would be well advised to have it liquidated first.

Recital 13, reproduced by the Court, names the French procédure de référé among the proceedings « on the substance of the matter » within Article 5(a). French law asks two questions of its own: under Article L. 511-1 of the code des procédures civiles d’exécution, a protective measure supposes a claim that appears well-founded in principle and circumstances likely to threaten its recovery. Both are always required.

The ex parte procedure: Form I, security, and the creditor’s own exposure

The creditor applies on the form set out in Annex I to Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2016/1823; under Article 11 the debtor is neither notified of the application nor heard before the order issues; under Article 12 security is mandatory where the creditor holds no title, and discretionary where he already holds one.

Article 11 admits no exception and leaves the court no discretion, and Article 8(1) makes the Annex I form compulsory: national law cannot substitute a domestic application for it.

Surprise has a price. Without a title the court shall require security to prevent abuse and compensate the debtor’s damage, unless it finds security inappropriate; with a title it may require it. Article 13 makes the creditor answer for damage caused by his own fault, the debtor bearing the burden of proof, and presumes that fault in four listed cases: chiefly failure to bring proceedings on the substance, and failure to serve or translate the documents. Liability follows the law of the Member State of enforcement, not that of the issuing State. The court decides within ten working days, or five where the creditor already holds a title, and judicial vacations do not excuse delay.

Which French court, and in what form

Article 6, which carries the heading « Jurisdiction », gives jurisdiction to the courts of a Member State without naming the court within it, and France has enacted no text dedicated to the European order.

Under French law the application for authorisation of a protective measure is made by requête (Article R. 511-1 of the code des procédures civiles d’exécution). Authorisation comes from the juge de l’exécution, the enforcement judge, whose exclusive jurisdiction rests on a text rewritten by loi n° 2026-403 of 26 May 2026; Article L. 511-3 lets the president of the tribunal de commerce grant it where, sought before any proceedings, it aims to preserve a commercial claim. Both texts govern the French measure, not the European order.

Which French court is seised of an EAPO application, which body acts as information authority, and which authority receives the order are all set out in France’s declaration under Article 50 of the Regulation. That declaration appears in no French code, and no publicly accessible source consulted here reproduces it. The natural French route would be the requête, though no source settles how the Annex I form and the requête fit together. A claim for damages founded on Article 13 would normally go before the juge de l’exécution.

Cross-border enforcement: transmission, banks, and finding the debtor’s accounts

An order issued in one Member State is recognised in the others without special procedure and enforceable without a declaration of enforceability. Part A is transmitted under Article 29 to the competent authority of the State of enforcement, and the bank blocks the funds without delay.

The Regulation deliberately leaves that step open: Article 23(3) has the order transmitted by the issuing court or by the creditor, according to which of the two carries the burden of setting enforcement in motion under the law of the State of origin. Anyone who writes that the French court transmits the order has closed an alternative the text refuses to close.

All authorities involved in enforcing the order must act without delay. The bank blocks the stated amount, and funds above it stay untouched; where the balance falls short, the order bites only on what is there. The bank declares what it has blocked by the end of the third working day after implementation, and the debtor is served by the end of the third working day following receipt of that declaration. Preservation is not payment, though: turning frozen funds into money still requires a separate enforceable title. In France the order is carried out under the procedures applicable to equivalent national measures, since Articles 23(1) and 46 send everything the Regulation does not settle back to ordinary French law.

Finding the debtor’s accounts: Article 14 and the French channel

An international creditor who knows that his debtor holds an account located somewhere in a Member State, but knows neither the bank nor the IBAN, may file a request for account information with the court seised of his application, provided he already holds an enforceable judgment, court settlement or authentic instrument.

Where the title is not yet enforceable, the request survives only if the amount is substantial and the need urgent. It goes inside the application itself and must be substantiated on pain of rejection. Each Member State must offer at least one mechanism for obtaining that information, and France uses the second: the information authority draws on data held by public administrations, through Article L. 151 A of the livre des procédures fiscales, the only article in any French code to name Regulation (EU) No 655/2014. Seised by a court of a request founded on Article 14, the commissaire de justice, whom that text still calls huissier de justice, « may obtain the address of the institutions with which an account is held in the debtor’s name ». The creditor therefore learns the identity of the bank, not the balance and not the movements on it.

The debtor’s remedies: Article 33, Form VII, and amounts exempt from preservation

Once the order has been implemented, the debtor challenges it on the remedy form set out in Annex VII: before the courts of the Member State of origin under Article 33, and before those of the Member State of enforcement under Article 34, on grounds that the Regulation lists exhaustively.

Article 33 allows revocation or modification on seven listed grounds: the conditions of the Regulation were not met, the documents were not served within fourteen days of the preservation, the language requirements were disregarded, over-preserved amounts were not released, the claim has been paid or dismissed on the substance, or the underlying title has been set aside. Whichever ground is invoked, the application is brought to the notice of the other party. The service ground is curable, though: the remedy is granted unless the omission is made good within fourteen days of the creditor being told of the application. It is a trap for the careless creditor rather than an automatic nullity.

Before the courts of the State of enforcement, Article 34 opens a second, distinct door. Enforcement is limited where amounts exempt from seizure were ignored or wrongly counted, and terminated where the account falls outside the scope of the Regulation, where enforcement of the title has been refused locally, where its enforceability has been suspended in the State of origin, or where enforcement would be manifestly contrary to public policy there.

Exempt amounts follow no European threshold: Article 31 refers to the law of the Member State of enforcement, which applies the exemption of its own motion or leaves the debtor to seek a remedy under Article 34(1)(a). French law does reserve amounts that cannot be seized, so a creditor blocking a private individual’s account should not count on recovering the whole of it. Article 38 lets the debtor offer security in place of the preservation, and Article 35 belongs to the creditor too.

Which French court hears these applications is nowhere stated. Combining Article 46 with the exclusive jurisdiction of the juge de l’exécution over disputes arising from protective measures, they would normally fall to that judge, but no source consulted says so. Blocking is not attribution: to reach the money the creditor moves on to an enforcement measure, and in France the conservatory attachment turns into a saisie-attribution.

EAPO vs French saisie conservatoire: when to choose which

Both instruments pursue the same protective aim, but they do not cover the same ground: the European order reaches funds held in a bank account maintained in another Member State, while the French saisie conservatoire reaches all movable property, tangible or intangible, belonging to the debtor in France.

Reach is the second difference: the European order touches money on a bank account and nothing else, whereas Article L. 521-1 of the code des procédures civiles d’exécution extends the French measure to stock, vehicles, company shares and claims alike, rendering them unavailable. Where the debtor’s assets sit in France, the European route can be replaced by a French saisie conservatoire.

The third difference lies in where each system rewards a creditor who already holds a title. Under the Regulation, an enforceable title removes a substantive condition, the fumus boni iuris. Under French law both substantive conditions are always required; what the title removes is the prior judicial authorisation. Article L. 511-2 dispenses with it for an enforceable title, a court decision not yet enforceable, an accepted bill of exchange, a promissory note, a cheque, sums due under Article 19-2 of the law of 10 July 1965, and unpaid rent under a written lease. Neither instrument outranks the other: Article 1(2) presents the European order as an alternative that leaves national measures intact.

What happens when a French saisie conservatoire is already in place

French law settles the question in terms rather than leaving it to practice, through the mechanism of unavailability.

Where the attachment bears on a claim for a sum of money, Article L. 523-1 provides that the act of attachment « renders it unavailable » up to the amount authorised by the judge, and that it « produces the effects of the consignment provided for by Article 2350 of the Civil Code ». That consignment, ordered by way of security, entails special appropriation and a right of preference. The consequence is mechanical rather than a contest between creditors: the first attachment renders the claim unavailable to the extent of its amount, so a second attachment arriving on funds already unavailable finds nothing left to attach. Either the creditor fails to obtain an enforceable title and the measure lapses (caducité, under Article L. 511-4), so that it is retroactively wiped out. Or it is validated by the subsequent proceedings, and conversion into a saisie-attribution carries immediate attribution of the claim under Article L. 523-2, the instrument of conversion having to refer, on pain of nullity, to the original procès-verbal de saisie conservatoire. In our practice the effect for a foreign creditor is blunt: whoever attaches first reaches the funds, and whoever arrives afterwards finds nothing.

Choosing between the two instruments is therefore also a choice of date. Waiting for a European order while a French saisie conservatoire is immediately available can cost the creditor the money itself, not merely time.

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