France is one of the 20 Member States that have received a letter of formal notice sent by the Commission, because they have not had notified on 27 January 2011 measures fully transposing the Directive on common standards and procedures in Member States for returning illegally staying third-country nationals 2008/115/EC (hereafter the Returns Directive), and one of the 14 Member States that have not complied with such an obligation of transposition before the 24th of December 2010 fixed by the Directive (Article 20) meanwhile this paper is written down. Yet the implementation of the European text is at the core of the French political agenda during spring 2011.In order to give a comprehensive and critical approach of the way France has considered the transposition of the Return Directive, we think that it is necessary to examine the text the two French assemblies adopted, putting into the light the main tensions that have arisen and the key problems that remain. Thus, we propose to focus our attention on five topics of the French law that, on our opinion, deserve a specific analysis: 1) the limitation of the scope of the text; 2) the organization of removal decisions and entry bans; 3) the importance of the detention measures; 4) the restriction of the procedural guarantees and legal safeguards; 5) the incomplete reinforced protection granted to vulnerable people.