France Employment Law: Dismissal, Resignation, Severance and Pay

French employment law is codified in the Code du travail, a single national code that sets the floor for nearly every working relationship in the country. Collective bargaining agreements, known as conventions collectives, sit on top of that floor and are often the source of the rules that matter most in practice, including notice periods and enhanced indemnities. Where a collective agreement or an individual contract is more favorable than the statutory minimum, the employee receives the higher amount rather than both combined.

Two contract types dominate. The contrat a duree indeterminee (CDI) is the open ended default, and the contrat a duree determinee (CDD) is the fixed term exception, which is why many fixed term contracts end with a ten percent end of contract bonus that a CDI does not carry. Disputes between an employee and an employer are heard by the conseil de prud'hommes, France's specialist labor court, and most of the deadlines on this page are measured against a filing before that court.

This section of our France legal guide is organised around the question most readers actually arrive with: how a contract ends, and what the employee is owed when it does. Each summary below links to a detailed page.

Information last verified on 20 July 2026. This page presents general legal information, not legal advice.

The Five Ways an Employment Contract Ends

French law does not treat every ending the same way. Who initiated the separation, and on what grounds, determines the notice owed, the indemnity payable, and whether the departing employee can claim unemployment benefits.

There are five routes worth knowing: resignation by the employee, mutual termination by agreement, disciplinary dismissal for misconduct, economic dismissal when the job itself disappears, and the presumption of resignation that now follows job abandonment. The sections below take each in turn.

Resignation: The Notice Period Comes From the Agreement, Not the Code

Readers are often surprised to learn that French law does not set a general notice period for resignation. The existence and duration of a preavis de demission come from the applicable convention collective, or failing that, from local and professional usage. Only a handful of professions have a notice fixed directly by statute, including VRP sales representatives, professional journalists, and assistants maternels.

Cadres have no separate statutory notice rule at all. The commonly repeated three month figure for cadres comes from a collective agreement such as Syntec, never from the Code du travail itself. If the employer dispenses the employee from working the notice period, the employer must still pay the salary that would have been earned during it.

A few situations shorten or remove notice entirely. A pregnant employee, or an employee resigning after maternity or adoption leave to raise a child, can leave with a shortened or zero notice period and owes the employer no compensation. Our full guide to resignation notice in France sets out the exceptions and the unemployment consequences, including the defined list of demissions legitimes and the reassessment available after 121 days of documented job search.

Mutual Termination: The Rupture Conventionnelle

The rupture conventionnelle is a mutual termination that neither the employer nor the employee can impose on the other. After signing, each party has 15 calendar days to withdraw before either can request homologation, and the DREETS then has 15 working days to review the request, with silence counting as tacit approval. Protected employees such as staff representatives go through the labor inspector for authorisation instead.

Its practical appeal is that, unlike a resignation, it opens rights to unemployment benefits. Our guide to the rupture conventionnelle procedure walks through the mandatory interviews, the withdrawal window, the homologation filing, and the case law on when the procedure remains valid during sick leave or after maternity leave.

The money side has its own page. The indemnity can never be lower than the statutory dismissal indemnity, and unlike that indemnity it carries no minimum seniority requirement whatsoever. Our page on rupture conventionnelle indemnity rules explains the legal floor, the income tax exemption up to six times the annual social security ceiling (288,360 EUR for 2026), which is lost entirely if the employee can already claim a mandatory retirement pension when the contract ends, and the employer side contribution on the socially exempt portion of the indemnity, which rose from 30 percent to 40 percent on 1 January 2026 and does not reduce what the employee receives.

Dismissal for Misconduct: Three Degrees of Fault

French disciplinary dismissal recognises three degrees of fault, and the difference is financial. Faute simple, faute grave, and faute lourde each carry different consequences for the employee. Faute grave removes the right to notice pay and to the statutory dismissal indemnity, though the employee still keeps the paid leave indemnity. Faute lourde requires proof of intent to harm the employer, and since a 2016 constitutional ruling it no longer forfeits the paid leave indemnity either.

The procedure is tightly timed. The preliminary meeting cannot be held less than 5 working days after the convocation letter is presented, and the sanction cannot be notified sooner than 2 working days or later than 1 month after that meeting. Disciplinary proceedings must be started within 2 months of the day the employer learned of the facts, unless the same facts also triggered criminal proceedings within that period.

Crucially, the burden of proving that misconduct rises to the level of faute grave rests on the employer, not on the employee. Our detailed guide to dismissal for gross misconduct covers each degree of fault, the procedural calendar, and the 12 month window to contest a dismissal before the conseil de prud'hommes.

Economic Dismissal: When the Job Disappears

Economic dismissal is a separate regime with its own justification test. French law recognises only four grounds: economic difficulties, technological change, reorganisation needed to safeguard competitiveness, and cessation of business activity. Economic difficulties are measured against quantified thresholds that scale with company size, running from one quarter of declining orders or turnover in companies under 11 employees to four consecutive quarters in companies of 300 or more.

Collective procedures add further obligations. Companies dismissing 10 or more employees within 30 days while employing 50 or more staff must implement a plan de sauvegarde de l'emploi validated or approved by the regional labor authority (DREETS). The contrat de securisation professionnelle is offered in companies under 1,000 employees and gives the employee 21 calendar days to accept or refuse it.

Two protections often go unclaimed. The redundancy selection criteria must weigh family responsibilities, seniority, difficulty of reinsertion, and professional qualities together rather than any one factor, and employees dismissed for economic reasons keep a one year priority for rehiring if they request it within that year. Our guide to economic dismissal in France explains each ground and the reclassification search, which since the 2017 reforms covers only positions located on French national territory.

Job Abandonment and the Presumption of Resignation

Since 2023, an employee who stops coming to work is no longer automatically headed for a disciplinary dismissal. The default mechanism is a presumption of resignation, though the employer is not obliged to use this route and can still choose a disciplinary dismissal instead, which follows a different procedure with different consequences. The employer must first send a mise en demeure by registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt, or by hand delivery against a signed receipt, and must give the employee at least 15 days to respond, counted from the date the letter is presented rather than the date it is read.

The Conseil d'Etat upheld the underlying decree on 18 December 2024 but required that the notice explicitly warn the employee of the consequence of not responding. Several legitimate reasons block the presumption entirely, including medical grounds, exercising the right to refuse dangerous work, a lawful strike, refusing an unlawful instruction, and a unilateral change to the contract by the employer. Because a presumed resignation is generally treated like a voluntary departure for unemployment insurance, the stakes are high, and our page on job abandonment in France sets out the procedure and the exceptions in full.

What the Employee Is Owed at the End

Whatever the reason a contract ends, the employer must hand over three documents: a certificat de travail, an attestation destined for France Travail, and a recu pour solde de tout compte. Signing the recu is not mandatory, and an employer cannot withhold payment because the employee declines to sign it. An employee has six months from signing to formally contest it, and sums omitted from the document are not covered by that bar at all. Our guide to final pay and the solde de tout compte explains what the settlement should contain and the penalties for missing documents.

The headline payment in most dismissals is the statutory severance indemnity, payable once the employee reaches 8 months of continuous seniority. The reference salary used is whichever is more favorable to the employee: average monthly gross pay over the last 12 months, or one third of gross pay over the last 3 months, with bonuses prorated. See our worked examples in France severance pay.

Working Time and Leave During the Contract

Two entitlements generate more disputes than any other while the contract is still running. The legal working week is 35 hours, with maximum limits of 10 hours in a single day, 48 hours in a single week, and an average of 44 hours over any 12 consecutive weeks. Absent a different agreement, overtime is increased by 25 percent for the first 8 hours beyond the legal week and by 50 percent for each additional hour, subject to a default annual contingent of 220 hours. Our guide to overtime pay in France covers the majoration rates, the forfait jours exception, and the tax treatment for 2026.

Paid leave accrues at 2.5 jours ouvrables per month of actual work, capped at 30 jours ouvrables (five weeks) per year. Since a 2024 law, leave also accrues during non occupational sick leave at 2 jours ouvrables per month, capped at 24 jours ouvrables per reference period. The two year window that let still employed staff claim back leave for pre 2024 sick leave closed in late April 2026, but employees who have since left remain covered by the ordinary three year salary prescription. Our page on paid leave in France explains the accrual rules, the 15 month carryover, and what departed employees can still claim.