Franchise agreement (contrat de franchise)
The contract binding franchisor and franchisee, setting out rights and obligations over the full term — typically 5 to 10 years: concessions granted, reciprocal obligations, territory, exit conditions and renewal terms.
In practice
Its critical clauses are negotiated at entry: genuine versus nominal territorial exclusivity, conditions for selling the business, post-contractual non-compete proportionality. In an international network, each linguistic version is locally binding — ensuring coherence across 21 language versions is a separate legal workstream. A franchise agreement standard in France runs 20-60 pages and should be reviewed by a specialist lawyer before signature.