A requisition is not an expropriation and differs from it by two features the state emphasises: it is temporary, and it gives rise to compensation provided for by local law. Those two features push the file outside the cover, one because the deprivation is not permanent, the other because another debtor exists. An investor whose warehouse is requisitioned for an announced six months therefore faces a loss that is not yet one, with the promise of being compensated by the very party that deprived it of its property.
The way out rests on a mechanism already met, which makes the cover independent of announcements: continuous deprivation for a stated period is deemed a total loss, whatever characterisation the state gives and whatever intention to return is professed. Six or twelve months depending on the wording. That mechanism is the only real protection against a requisition that drags on, and it is useful only on condition that the clock has started, that is that the insured notified instead of waiting for the announced date.
Yet waiting is exactly what a reasonable insured does, and that is the central trap of this module. It was told six months, it cooperates, it does not want to sour a relationship with an administration it will meet again, and it tells itself it will notify if the period is not kept. Meanwhile its duty to notify without delay runs, the continuous deprivation clock does not, and it arrives in the eighth month with a late notification on a triggering event it should have placed on day one. The right conduct is to notify immediately, describing the facts without characterising them legally: the warehouse was taken on such a day, use has ceased, return is announced for such a date.
The promise of local compensation calls for separate treatment, because it operates on two registers that get confused. It is first a claim against the state, often founded on a text, sometimes real and paid. It is then, within the policy, a ground of reduction or a condition: many wordings deduct what the insured has received or can receive locally, and some require that it have used the remedies available. A promise must therefore be told apart from an enforceable claim: a ministerial announcement is not a right, a decree setting a scale is, and an insured treating both alike delays its own file by pursuing compensation that does not exist.
What the return delivers is the second subject, and it differs from that of the revoked measure on a point that changes the reasoning. Where an expropriation is annulled, the return was not anticipated and the insured was indemnified for a permanent loss. Where a requisition ends, the return was announced from the outset, and what constitutes the damage is not the deprivation itself but its excess duration and the condition of the property returned. A warehouse returned empty after three years has suffered a loss of stock, a business interruption and degradation, and none of those three heads is the same as the value of the warehouse.
One must then state the single practical step that decides these files, and it costs nothing. At the moment the property is handed to the authority, as at the moment of its return, have the condition recorded by a third party: a bailiff, a local expert, failing that a joint record signed by the officer taking possession, failing that again a dated photographic record and an inventory signed by two employees. Without that entry record it will be impossible to establish what the warehouse contained and in what condition it was, and the administration will argue it returned what it received.
One difficulty of characterisation remains and it is better known than discovered. A requisition that lasts beyond the reasonable, or whose return is postponed with no term, ceases in fact to be temporary whatever its characterisation in law. The tipping point is found in no text: it is shown by facts, a duration several times the one announced, the property's allocation to a lasting use, the absence of any return timetable, a third party installed on the premises. It is the same exercise as creeping expropriation, applied to a measure whose provisional character is the state's only argument.
Three steps close this module and the first is counterintuitive. Notify from day one on the basis of continuous deprivation, without waiting for the announced date and without characterising the facts legally. Have the property's condition recorded on taking and on return, which is the one piece of evidence nobody can reconstruct. And pursue the local compensation in parallel rather than instead, because the insurer will deduct it anyway and will ask what was attempted.
A European distributor of medical equipment holds a warehouse and its stock in an East African country. On 4 March 2023 a health emergency is declared and an order requisitions the warehouse for six months, citing a 1998 text providing for requisition compensation fixed by a commission. The stock, valued at 6.2 million euros, is left in place and no condition record is made. The compensation commission has never been constituted. The six months are extended three times by successive orders, after which nothing further is notified. The warehouse is returned on 12 February 2026, empty and with a damaged roof. The group notifies its insurer in March 2026. The policy provides that continuous deprivation of twelve months is deemed a total loss and deducts any compensation received locally. Where does it stand?
The file is damaged by a delay and by an absence, and both must be measured before looking for what remains. The delay first: continuous deprivation of twelve months was established as of 4 March 2024, and the group notifies in March 2026, two years later. It will have to explain a duty to notify without delay that it let run, and its explanation is everyone's, namely that a return was being announced. That explanation is human and it is not legal: the insurer will note that the successive extensions should have alerted it by the second at the latest, and it will be right. Depending on the wording and the governing law, the sanction will range from proportional reduction to forfeiture, and that is the first ground to prepare, by producing the extension orders to show a legitimate belief in an imminent return rather than negligence. The absence next, and it is heavier still: no condition record was made on taking. The 6.2 million of stock was on site, it is no longer, and nothing establishes what the warehouse held on 4 March 2023 except the group's own accounts, which are unilateral. Reconstruction must come from outside, as for an inaccessible asset: suppliers' delivery notes, import customs declarations, the certified 2022 closing inventory, property insurance certificates carrying a sum insured. That reconstruction is feasible and it is urgent. Three elements run in its favour and must be used. The compensation commission was never constituted, so local compensation is not an enforceable claim but an unkept promise: the insurer cannot deduct what does not exist, and the insured must establish that it asked for the commission to be set up, in writing, which also answers the requirement of having used the remedies. The extensions stopped being notified, which deprives the requisition of any term and tips it in fact, whatever its characterisation in law. And the return of 12 February 2026 finally allows a joint condition record, the exit one, which must be made immediately if it has not been, before any resumption of operations.
- 01A requisition calls itself temporary and gives a right to local compensation: those two features push the file outside the cover, one by duration, the other by the existence of another debtor.
- 02Continuous deprivation for a stated period is deemed a total loss whatever the announcements, but the clock runs only if the insured notified instead of waiting for the promised date.
- 03A ministerial announcement is not a claim: telling a promise of compensation apart from an enforceable right saves months spent pursuing something that does not exist.
- 04The damage of a requisition is not the value of the property but the excess duration, the vanished stock, the business interruption and the degradation: four distinct heads.
- 05The condition record on TAKING is the one piece of evidence nobody can reconstruct, and it is the one omitted because a prompt return is believed in.