Procedures
French-model procedure with specialised commercial and administrative courts
The 1974 Code of Civil Procedure governs ordinary litigation, with separate commercial courts since 1997 and administrative courts since 1993, and a Court of Cassation at the apex.
Key rules
- Jurisdiction — Courts of first instance, appeal courts, Court of Cassation, plus the commercial and administrative hierarchies.
- Deadline — 30 days to appeal a first-instance civil judgment
- Deadline — 30 days to petition the Court of Cassation
- Deadline — Arbitral awards: 15 days to seek annulment after notification
Governing law
- Code of Civil Procedure, Dahir 1-74-4471974
- Law 53-95 establishing commercial courts
- Law 41-90 establishing administrative courts
- Law 08-05 on arbitration and conventional mediation, replaced by Law 95-172022
In practice
The 2022 arbitration statute, Law 95-17, replaced the provisions previously embedded in the Code of Civil Procedure with a standalone act, modernising the treatment of international arbitration and separating it more cleanly from domestic arbitration; material citing Law 08-05 is out of date. Morocco is a New York Convention party and enforcement is generally reliable through the commercial courts. The existence of three parallel first-instance hierarchies — ordinary, commercial and administrative — means jurisdiction is contested more often than in a single-hierarchy system, and a decision on jurisdiction is itself appealable, which is a common source of delay. Judgments are enforced through court bailiffs, and enforcement against public bodies remains materially harder than against private parties.