diff --git a/odoo/addons/base/tests/test_misc.py b/odoo/addons/base/tests/test_misc.py
index b37ee11246a..2cf2ebc7842 100644
--- a/odoo/addons/base/tests/test_misc.py
+++ b/odoo/addons/base/tests/test_misc.py
@@ -5,7 +5,7 @@ import datetime
 from dateutil.relativedelta import relativedelta
 import pytz
 
-from odoo.tools import misc, date_utils, merge_sequences
+from odoo.tools import misc, date_utils, merge_sequences, remove_accents
 from odoo.tests.common import TransactionCase, BaseCase
 
 
@@ -302,3 +302,18 @@ class TestGroupCalls(BaseCase):
         callbacks.clear()
         callbacks()
         self.assertEqual(log, ["foo", 1, 2, "baz"])
+
+
+class TestRemoveAccents(BaseCase):
+    def test_empty_string(self):
+        self.assertEqual(remove_accents(False), False)
+        self.assertEqual(remove_accents(''), '')
+        self.assertEqual(remove_accents(None), None)
+
+    def test_latin(self):
+        self.assertEqual(remove_accents('Niño Hernández'), 'Nino Hernandez')
+        self.assertEqual(remove_accents('Anaïs Clémence'), 'Anais Clemence')
+
+    def test_non_latin(self):
+        self.assertEqual(remove_accents('العربية'), 'العربية')
+        self.assertEqual(remove_accents('русский алфавит'), 'русскии алфавит')
diff --git a/odoo/tools/misc.py b/odoo/tools/misc.py
index e7f087f1636..e1dc069cddb 100644
--- a/odoo/tools/misc.py
+++ b/odoo/tools/misc.py
@@ -754,6 +754,8 @@ def remove_accents(input_str):
     """Suboptimal-but-better-than-nothing way to replace accented
     latin letters by an ASCII equivalent. Will obviously change the
     meaning of input_str and work only for some cases"""
+    if not input_str:
+        return input_str
     input_str = ustr(input_str)
     nkfd_form = unicodedata.normalize('NFKD', input_str)
     return u''.join([c for c in nkfd_form if not unicodedata.combining(c)])