French Labour Law Essentials for Foreign Employers Hiring in France
Two people at a bistro counter, one explaining with their hands, the other listening with a raised eyebrow
The Code du travail is only the floor: a sector-wide collective agreement applies to your French entity automatically and can be stricter than the law. The operational essentials for a foreign employer, article by article, with the traps that cost the most.

News : France raised its statutory minimum wage twice in 2026. An order dated 22 May 2026, published in the Journal officiel n° 0121 of 24 May 2026, lifted the SMIC by 2.41 % with effect from 1 June 2026, taking the gross hourly minimum to €12.31 and the gross monthly minimum to €1,867.02 for a 35-hour week. The increase fell outside the usual annual calendar: it was triggered by the automatic indexation mechanism once inflation reached at least 2 %. It was the second rise of the year, after +1.18 % on 1 January 2026 (Arrêté du 22 mai 2026, JORF n° 0121 du 24 mai 2026).

French labour law sets a floor, not the whole rule. Above the Code du travail sits a sector-wide collective agreement : a convention collective : which applies to your company automatically, which you do not choose, and which can be stricter than the Code on contracts, probation, overtime, working time, pay and notice.

Budgeting from abroad, you probably planned one revision a year. There were two (Légifrance, service-public.gouv.fr). Below, the essentials, ordered by what surprises those arriving from another system. I am an HR practitioner, not a lawyer, and I say where that line falls.

Your collective agreement is not optional, and you do not choose it

Article L2261-2 is blunt: « La convention collective applicable est celle dont relève l’activité principale exercée par l’employeur. » It follows from what your entity actually does, not from a box you tick. The NAF code is only an indicator.

Article L2251-1 lets an agreement carry provisions more favourable than the law: longer notice, higher overtime premiums, extra leave, a thirteenth month, pay grades above the SMIC. None of that is in the Code; all of it can be in your branch. Under article R2262-1, in force since 1 November 2023, you must inform employees of the applicable agreements and keep an up-to-date copy at the workplace.

Settle this before the first contract: everything below is read twice, once in the Code, once in your branch. If the HR function itself is still to build, I take that sequence apart in setting up the HR function of a French subsidiary from day one.

Contracts: the open-ended contract is the default

Article L1221-2 makes the CDI the normal and general form of employment; everything else is an exception to be justified. Before day one, article L1221-10 prohibits hiring before a nominative declaration to the social protection bodies, which article R1221-4 allows at the earliest eight days beforehand.

On fixed-term contracts (CDD), the most common traps:

  • A CDD can never fill a job tied to the normal and permanent activity of the business; no commercial reason overrides this.
  • It must be written, state the precise reason for the recruitment, and be handed over within two working days, on pain of a fine up to €3,750, or €7,500 for a repeat offence (service-public.fr, fiche F34).
  • Its maximum duration is set first by the branch: article L1242-8-1 applies only failing a branch stipulation, capping the total at eighteen months : a fallback, not the rule.
  • Renewals likewise: L1243-13 lets an extended branch agreement set the maximum number, L1243-13-1 allows two where the branch is silent, and L1244-3 imposes a waiting period before re-filling the post.
  • The contrat de chantier ou d’opération, article L1223-8, exists only where an extended branch agreement sets the conditions : and it is an open-ended contract, not a fixed term renamed.

The probationary period: short, and often not renewable

Article L1221-19 sets the initial maximum: two months for workers and clerical staff, three for technicians, four for managers (cadres).

Then the trap. Article L1221-21: « La période d’essai peut être renouvelée une fois si un accord de branche étendu le prévoit. » Renewal included, the ceilings are four, six and eight months. Without an extended branch agreement no renewal is possible, and one granted without that basis is worth nothing whatever the contract says. Since 9 September 2023, employers can no longer exceed the statutory maxima, which some branch agreements predating 26 June 2008 used to allow (article 19 of law n° 2023-171 of 9 March 2023, transposing EU directive 2019/1152 : entreprendre.service-public.gouv.fr).

Working time: 35 hours is a threshold, not a ceiling

Rule Article Limit
Statutory week L3121-27 35 hours
Maximum day L3121-18 10 hours; 12 by agreement
Weekly maximum L3121-20 48 hours in one week
Average weekly maximum L3121-22 44 hours over 12 consecutive weeks
Daily rest L3131-1 11 consecutive hours
Weekly rest L3132-2 24 consecutive hours plus daily rest

Overtime attracts 25 % for the first eight hours and 50 % beyond (article L3121-36) : but that article opens with « À défaut d’accord », so an agreement can set another rate. The default annual quota is 220 hours (article D3121-24), again failing an agreement.

The forfait jours, and why it is the most expensive mistake here

The forfait annuel en jours exists, but it is heavily conditioned.

  • Reserved for managers with genuine autonomy over their schedule, and employees whose working time cannot be predetermined (article L3121-58).
  • It requires a collective agreement setting the categories concerned, the reference period, days capped at 218, the regular monitoring of workload, a periodic exchange on workload and work-life balance, and the right to disconnect (article L3121-64).
  • The employer must regularly satisfy itself that workload is reasonable (L3121-60); giving up rest days needs a written annual amendment, not tacitly renewable, with an uplift of at least 10 % (L3121-59). The employee sits outside the 35 hours and the daily and weekly maxima, but remains subject to daily and weekly rest (L3121-62).

A forfait jours with no valid agreement behind it, or no real workload monitoring, is deprived of effect: the employee falls back into hourly time and can claim all their overtime retroactively, an exposure that usually surfaces the day the person leaves. An HR reading alone is not enough here. Have the agreement and your monitoring reviewed by an avocat en droit social. My job is to spot the risk and keep the monitoring alive; judging whether it survives a challenge is theirs.

Paid leave: five weeks, and a 2024 reform many employers missed

Article L3141-3: two and a half working days per month worked, capped at thirty. Five weeks.

What is still wrong in many head offices: law n° 2024-364 of 22 April 2024 aligned France with EU law on sickness. Non-occupational illness used to generate no leave. Under article L3141-5, 7° those absences now count as actual work, and under article L3141-5-1 they generate two working days per month, capped at twenty-four per reference period. Occupational accidents and illnesses stay at 2.5 days, up to 30.

Then the costly trap. An employee prevented from taking leave by illness gets a fifteen-month carry-over (L3141-19-1). But article L3141-19-3 requires the employer, within the month following the return to work, to inform the employee « par tout moyen conférant date certaine à leur réception » of the days available and the deadline. The fifteen months only start running from that information. No proof, no expiry: the leave keeps accumulating.

Ending a contract: the process is the substance

Coming from an at-will system, read this twice: a French dismissal is a fixed sequence, and getting it wrong is itself a ground for challenge, independently of the reason.

  • It must be justified by a « cause réelle et sérieuse » (article L1232-1).
  • The employee is called to a preliminary interview before any decision, held no sooner than five working days after the convening letter is presented (article L1232-2).
  • The dismissal letter goes by registered post with acknowledgement of receipt, states the grounds, and cannot be sent less than two working days after the interview (article L1232-6).
  • Notice, absent gross misconduct: under six months’ service, as fixed by law, agreement or custom; six months to under two years, one month; from two years, two months, subject to more favourable collective terms (article L1234-1).

The rupture conventionnelle of article L1237-11, cannot be imposed by either party. It runs through fifteen calendar days of withdrawal from the day after signature, then approval: the DDETSPP has fifteen working days from receipt to check validity, and silence approves it (service-public.gouv.fr, fiche F19030, verified 26 June 2026).

If a dismissal lacks a real and serious cause, compensation is capped: article L1235-3, in force since 1 April 2018, frames it by a statutory scale in months of gross salary, varying with length of service and with whether the company usually employs at least eleven people. I deliberately do not reproduce that scale here: half a table is worse than none. Read it in the article itself.

Staff representation: the threshold is eleven

A comité social et économique is required from eleven employees, and only once that headcount has been reached for twelve consecutive months (article L2311-2). Its remit (article L2312-8) is the collective expression of employees in decisions on the management and economic development of the company. From fifty employees its powers become full and the company pays an operating subsidy of 0.20 % of gross payroll (article L2315-61).

Where my role stops and a lawyer’s begins

My HR work: to be the single point of contact for head offices with employees in France and no HR on the ground: the right collective agreement applied, contracts and probation clauses that hold, working-time arrangements with the monitoring that validates them, the leave and CSE calendar, an exit prepared properly. What I do not do, and where you need an avocat en droit social: a contested dismissal, a redundancy plan, a harassment or discrimination allegation, litigation before the conseil de prud’hommes, any opinion applying an article to your facts. I say when that line is reached, before the problem hardens. Platform or person on the ground is a separate decision, in EOR platform or an HR partner on the ground.

What this article does not cover

  • Payroll and social contributions. No rates, no amounts, deliberately.
  • Immigration and residence permits. The people side is in relocating a team to France.
  • The figures in the L1235-3 scale, for the reason above.
  • Sector-specific regimes (construction, transport, hospitality, agriculture) and your particular case: nothing here is legal advice on your facts.

The state of the law described here is that of 2 September 2026, and it moves: the minimum wage alone moved twice in eight months, and the congé supplémentaire de naissance (one to two months for either parent, at 70 % then 60 % of net salary) has applied since 1 July 2026 (Code du travail numérique, décret n° 2026-419 of 30 May 2026). And if your question is where to anchor HR in France, that is the local HR anchor.

FAQ

How do I find out which collective agreement applies to my French entity?

It follows from the main activity your entity actually carries on, not from a choice you make (article L2261-2); the NAF code is only an indicator. Settle it before the first contract, then inform your employees and keep a copy at the workplace (article R2262-1).

Is a six-month probationary period possible in France?

Only where an extended branch agreement provides for a single renewal: initial periods are two, three and four months depending on category, taking the ceilings to four, six and eight. Without that provision no renewal is valid, however the contract is drafted.

At head office, managers are salaried with no time recording. Can I do the same in France?

Only through a forfait annuel en jours, if a collective agreement contains everything article L3121-64 requires and the workload monitoring genuinely happens. Without that, the arrangement is deprived of effect and the employee can claim their overtime retroactively.

Going through this with someone on the ground

I am Christine Martin, an independent HR consultant in France, working with head offices abroad. These situations rarely reach me as legal questions, more often as practical ones: a contract to sign next week, a headcount about to cross eleven. Someone French-speaking, here, who knows which collective agreement applies to you, is a different proposition from a portal. Tell me where you stand and I will arrange a call.

Sources

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