What Happened

On April 1, 2026, the French National Assembly voted to amend the law on social and tax fraud to repeal France’s principal corporate anti-corruption enforcement mechanism (in place since 2016), the convention judiciaire d’intérêt public (CJIP), essentially the French version of a deferred prosecution-style agreement. It nearly didn’t survive.

On April 28, the commission mixte paritaire’s project (the joint committee tasked with reconciling the Assembly and Senate texts) preserved the CJIP rather than eliminating it, pulling the mechanism back from the edge.[1] The proposed text (No. 2701-A0) has been adopted by the national assembly on May 5, and the senate voted to do the same on May 11.[2]

Background: Sapin II and the CJIP

France’s 2016 “Sapin II” law created the CJIP for companies accused of corruption, influence peddling, tax fraud, money laundering, and connected offenses. The mechanism enables prosecutors to negotiate with the company under the oversight of a sitting judge, and enter an agreement involving a combination of a fine, a monitored compliance program of up to three years, and/or victim compensation. The company is not convicted and avoids debarment from public markets, but the agreement is published, and criminal prosecution of individual executives remains possible.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) noted that, prior to Sapin II, no French corporation had been definitively convicted for international corruption in 16 years under existing French criminal law. Only two such cases had ever been tried. Meanwhile, French companies were paying heavy penalties under the U.S. FCPA, with proceeds flowing to the U.S. Treasury. The CJIP was designed, in part, to reclaim French sovereignty over the sanctioning of French corporate misconduct.

The Track Record

Since 2016, the “Parquet National Financier” (PNF)[3] has concluded 31 CJIPs on probity[4] or tax fraud matters; other prosecutors’ offices have added 9 more, totaling over 40 agreements in a decade. The 2020 Airbus CJIP, coordinated with the U.S. DOJ and the U.K. Serious Fraud Office, remains the largest corruption-related financial sanction ever imposed in France. In 2025, the PNF reported €345.67 million in fines, confiscations, damages, and tax recoveries. Probity matters now represent 45% of PNF’s caseload. A 2021 OECD assessment called France’s progress “notable” and cited a “paradigm shift in the approach to corporate liability.”

The Case for Keeping the CJIP

Proponents — including the PNF, the compliance bar, and Transparency International France — argue the CJIP delivers faster resolution where traditional prosecutions take five to six years; produces outcomes in evidentiary environments where full-contest litigation consistently fails; incentivizes self-investigation, remediation, and voluntary disclosure; avoids disproportionate consequences like debarment while still imposing substantial financial penalties; mandates compliance programs monitored by the French Anti-Corruption Agency (AFA); and preserves judicial oversight, since a judge can reject the CJIP. Crucially, as previously noted, the CJIP resolves corporate liability only — individual executives remain fully exposed to prosecution.

The Detractors’ Case

Critics raise several objections: the CJIP sidesteps criminal law and allows companies to avoid public trials by paying a fine; there is no admission of guilt; victims lose their day in court (Transparency International France’s 2024 report found nearly 40% of identified victims were not compensated in cases involving a CJIP); and the mechanism has expanded beyond its original scope, notably into environmental matters (the 2024 Nestlé Waters CJIP) and offenses brought in via the “connexité” doctrine.

Critics also challenge the deterrent value of the amount of the fines: LVMH’s €10 million payment represented 0.02% of its revenue, although the judge is responsible for assessing the reasonableness of the fines compared to the alleged crime. And while CJIPs are published, the negotiations are confidential — the PNF’s 2023 guidelines strengthened that confidentiality — creating what opponents call a “public interest” (after all, it’s in the name) mechanism that operates in secrecy.

A Close Call… for Now

The outright repeal would have carried significant risks. French prosecutors would have returned to a pre-2016 toolkit that produced essentially no corporate corruption convictions in sixteen years. France’s international credibility — praised by the OECD, and relevant as the EU harmonizes anti-corruption criminal law — would have been undermined.

Perhaps most consequentially, abolition may have increased FCPA exposure under U.S. law for French and foreign companies where perceived lack of enforcement may cause the U.S. DOJ to “step in.” The DOJ’s June 9, 2025 memorandum on Guidelines for Investigations and Enforcement of the FCPA predicates the use of DOJ resources to investigate potential FCPA violations on the company’s host country’s ability and willingness to bring credible domestic prosecutions and, of course, compliance with U.S. standards. Eliminating the CJIP would have undermined France’s credibility to do so and contradicted the argument that Sapin II allows French institutions to reclaim sovereignty as the enforcement regime over French companies (and others), as opposed to the U.S.

Finally, the CJIP ecosystem rewards cooperation that often begins with internal whistleblowers, self-reporting, and remedial actions by companies. Without a credible self-reporting pathway, both companies and employees may have lost incentive to come forward in the first place.

After the dust settled, the CJIP not only survived but its scope was expanded to include complex tax evasion schemes (income and other) and other “engineered fraud” seeking to avoid detection of the use of undeclared workers and cross border social tax avoidance schemes.

What Multinational Companies Should Watch

Though the CJIP has likely survived for now, three things are clear:

• First, the tolerance of the CJIPs is tightening — perceived insufficiencies in using the CJIP by the PNF in certain high-profile corporate scandals, and the PNF’s expanded definition of “public interest,” created the political conditions for this vote.
• Second, the compliance infrastructure that CJIPs fostered at dozens of French firms persists under Sapin II’s Article 17[5] obligations regardless of the CJIP’s fate.
• Third, the cross-border enforcement picture is shifting on multiple fronts, simultaneously — EU harmonization, a reset U.S. FCPA posture, and now potential French retrenchment — and companies whose programs rest on substance rather than any single jurisdiction’s settlement mechanics remain best positioned to weather or adapt to potential changes.

The amendment that emerged on April 1 was not intended to just reform. In practice, it would have significantly curtailed the French government’s ability to assess sanctions meaningfully and weakened the incentives for corporations to implement effective compliance programs. A repeal would have reshaped France’s anti-corruption posture for the decade ahead.

If you have any questions or would like to discuss how we can help, reach out to Xavier Oustalniol.

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Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of StoneTurn Group, LLP, Province, LLC, or their affiliates. This article is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or other professional advice.

[1] The original National Assembly amendment would have repealed Articles 41-1-2, 41-1-3, and 180-2 of the Code de procédure pénale. Article 41-1-2 outlines the mechanism for the public prosecutor to propose a CJIP to a legal entity, allowing for a fine and compliance program to avoid trial. Article 180-2 concerns the suspension of the investigation for the legal entity during negotiations.
[2] The article that enshrines to the CJIP will also be renumbered from Article 41-1-2 to Article L. 322-1 under a pre-existing proposed recodification of the Code de procédure pénale — a procedural change, but a sign the framework is being integrated rather than abandoned.
^[3] The Parquet National Financier is a French judicial institution that investigates economic and financial crimes.
[4] Probity in the penal code includes the following felonies: corruption, influence peddling, illegal financial interest, government funds embezzlement, avoidance or improper collection of tax, and favoritism in allocation of public contracts.
[5] Article 17 (I) of Sapin II, provides in part that managers of companies are required to “implement measures and procedures to prevent and detect acts of bribery and influence peddling committed in France or abroad,” as contemplated in Article II.