We prove that there exists an interval of time which is uniform in the vanishing viscosity limit and for which the Navier-Stokes equation with Navier boundary condition has a strong solution. This solution is uniformly bounded in a conormal Sobolev space and has only one normal derivative bounded in L ∞ . This allows to get the vanishing viscosity limit to the incompressible Euler system from a strong compactness argument. 6

We study the inviscid limit of the free boundary Navier-Stokes equations. We prove the existence of solutions on a uniform time interval by using a suitable functional framework based on Sobolev conormal spaces. This allows us to use a strong compactness argument to justify the inviscid limit. Our approach does not rely on the justification of asymptotic expansions. In particular, we get a new existence result for the Euler equations with free surface from the one for Navier-Stokes.