Land recovered but not farmed: new facts may allow the evicted tenant to return

A notice to recover farmland is subject to two stages of review. The initial review takes place when the tenant challenges the notice within four months of receipt: the court checks whether the beneficiary meets the recovery conditions on the notice’s effective date. Subsequent review can then sanction a beneficiary who fails to honour their commitments or acts fraudulently against the tenant’s rights, for example by selling or leasing the property.

Case law had established two limits: subsequent review cannot rely on a ground already raised during the initial review, and a time-barred tenant cannot invoke breaches of which they were already aware at that time.

A tenant approaching retirement age may also oppose recovery and obtain an extension of the lease, during which no assignment is possible.

A landlord served a recovery notice for her son, a member of a farming company (SCEA). The tenants challenged it unsuccessfully but obtained an age-related extension of their lease. A new notice was served for the end of that extension; they did not challenge it and left the land at the end of October 2016. They later discovered that, as early as December 2016, the beneficiary had granted a rural lease to his wife. They sought reinstatement, with assignment of the lease to their son, and damages. The Court of Appeal granted their claims.

The Court of Cassation dismissed the appeal and provided three clarifications.

New facts. Where the landlord served a new notice at the end of the extension period, subsequent review cannot, if the initial notice was challenged, rely on a ground already raised by the tenant, unless there are new elements that were unknown to the tenant during the initial review or could not then be usefully raised. The lease granted to the wife after recovery was such an element.

Force majeure. The beneficiary argued that adoption of the regional master plan in June 2016 had deprived him of the declaration regime and amounted to force majeure. The Court rejected this: by the end of June 2016, he knew he no longer met the regime’s conditions and had four months to seek authorisation to farm, or abandon recovery if it was refused. The event was neither unforeseeable nor unavoidable.

The right to assign. Since the prohibition on assignment is limited to the extension period, a tenant who benefited from an extension may, after it expires, seek reinstatement with assignment of the lease to a descendant under Article L. 411-35.

This ruling was delivered under Article L. 411-58, paragraph 3, in its wording before 31 December 2022, which required the landlord to serve a new notice at the end of the extension. That provision was declared unconstitutional on 11 March 2022 and is no longer in force. The principles concerning new facts, force majeure and the right to assign nevertheless retain their significance.

The evicted tenant should therefore monitor what happens to the recovered land over nine years: a lease, a sale or farming entrusted to a relative may justify their return. The beneficiary must anticipate changes in farm structure controls: a regulatory change known in advance will not relieve them of the obligation to farm personally.