France’s Disciplinary Regulations (1975), as amended, provides that, under international conventions, pillage is prohibited. 

France’s LOAC Summary Note (1992) prohibits pillage. 

France’s LOAC Teaching Note (2000) provides: “Pillage is prohibited.” 

France’s LOAC Manual (2001) provides that pillage is a prohibited method of warfare. 

France’s Code of Military Justice (1982) punishes pillage and damage to commodities, goods or belongings committed by soldiers as a group. 

France’s Code of Military Justice (2006) states:

France’s Penal Code (1992), as amended in 2010, states in its section on war crimes common to both international and non-international armed conflicts: “Pillaging, with or without weapons, a city or locality, even when taken by assault, is punishable by 15 years’ imprisonment.” 

During the First World War, France adopted a law to extend its jurisdiction to offences committed in invaded territory. On this basis, some German officers and soldiers were convicted by courts-martial of acts of pillage. 

In the Szabados case before a French Military Tribunal in 1946, the accused, a former German non-commissioned officer of the 19th Police Regiment stationed in occupied France, was charged with, and found guilty of, inter alia, the count of pillage in time of war. The Tribunal found the looting of personal belongings and other property of civilians evicted from their homes prior to their destruction to be a violation of Article 440 of the French Penal Code, which dealt with pillage. 

In the Holstein case before a French Military Tribunal in 1947, some of the accused, members of various German units, were found guilty of war crimes for having committed acts of looting and pillage, prohibited under the French Code of Military Justice. 

In the Bauer case before a French Military Tribunal in 1947, a German gendarme was found guilty of war crimes for having stolen a sewing machine and other objects, which he took to Germany during the retreat from France. He was also found guilty of war crimes for having received stolen goods, when removing and using furniture which his predecessor in the gendarmerie post had stolen from a French inhabitant to whom the accused knew it belonged. 

In the Buch case before a French Military Tribunal in 1947, the accused, a paymaster during the occupation of France, was found guilty of a war crime for having received stolen goods. The German Kommandantur at Saint-Die had seized silverware which a French doctor had left behind in crates before leaving the locality. The goods were sold at an auction by the Kommandantur and part of it bought by the accused. 

In 1999, during the conflict in Kosovo, the French President criticized acts of the Serbian authorities in Kosovo, including pillage, and demanded that these acts cease. 

Under France’s Ordinance on Repression of War Crimes (1944), “the removal or export by any means from French territory of goods of any nature, including movable property and money” is likened to pillage. It is applicable to any perpetrator of the offence. 

In the Bommer case before a French Military Tribunal in 1947, the parents of a German family were charged with, and convicted of, theft and receiving stolen goods belonging to French citizens. Two of the daughters were charged with, and convicted of, the second count of the indictment only. The Tribunal considered the offences of theft under Article 379 of the French Penal Code – referred to therein as “fraudulent removal of property” – and receiving stolen goods under Article 460 of the Code – referred to as “knowingly receiving things taken, misappropriated or obtained by means of a crime or delict” – as war crimes. 

In the Lingenfelder case before a French Military Tribunal in 1947, the accused, a German settler in France, was charged with pillage for the removal of horses and vehicles belonging to the owner of a French farm. Without giving reasons for such finding, the Tribunal came to the conclusion that it did not amount to pillage. 

In the Baus case before a French Military Tribunal in 1947, the accused, a land superintendent in occupied France, was found guilty of a war crime for theft under the terms of the French Penal Code and for pillage under the 1944 Ordinance on Repression of War Crimes. He took with him during the retreat to Germany the property of the owners of the farms that he was managing. 

In the Benz case before a French Military Tribunal in 1947, the accused, a couple of German settlers, were found guilty of theft and receiving stolen goods, which the Tribunal considered to be war crimes. On their return to Germany at the end of the Second World War, they took with them movable property belonging to French inhabitants. 

In the Neber case before a French Military Tribunal in 1948, the accused, a German settler in France (Lorraine), was found guilty of a war crime for having received crockery stolen by her nephew from a French woman, which she took with her when returning to Germany towards the end of the war. 

In its judgment in the Roechling case in 1948, the General Tribunal at Rastadt of the Military Government for the French Zone of Occupation in Germany held that the accused, the proprietor of a German industrial trust and Reich Commissioner for the iron industry of the departments of Moselle and Meurthe-et-Moselle, was guilty of war crimes, inter alia, for participation in the economic pillage of occupied countries.