Rupture Conventionnelle: The Mutual Termination Procedure in France

A rupture conventionnelle is the negotiated route for ending a French permanent employment contract (CDI) by mutual agreement, rather than through dismissal or resignation. French law sets a fixed sequence for it: one or more interviews, a signed agreement, a 15 calendar day withdrawal window open to each party, and a review by the labor administration before the contract can actually end. For a broader look at related topics, see the France employment law hub.

Information last verified on 19 July 2026. This article presents general legal information, not legal advice.

Jurisdiction scope: This article covers the rupture conventionnelle procedure under French national employment law (Code du travail). It applies only in France.

What Is a Rupture Conventionnelle?

Under article L1237-11 of the Code du travail, an employer and an employee may agree together on the conditions for ending the employment contract that binds them. A rupture conventionnelle is exclusive of dismissal and resignation: neither side can impose it on the other, and it exists only once both parties sign a written convention.

This distinguishes it sharply from a resignation, which is a unilateral act by the employee, and from a dismissal for gross misconduct, which is a unilateral act by the employer. A rupture conventionnelle sits between the two: it requires both sides to actually want the same outcome, neither an employer showing cause for a dismissal nor an employee giving a reason for resigning is part of this route.

Because the termination date is negotiated rather than fixed by a statutory notice period, the convention itself records the agreed effective end date. That date can only take legal effect once homologation, or authorisation for a protected employee, has actually been granted, which is why the parties cannot simply pick any date they like without accounting for the review periods described below.

Who Can Use It, and What It Does Not Cover

The mechanism applies to permanent contracts (CDI). It is not a catch-all route for every kind of contract termination. Under article L1237-16, certain terminations fall outside this individual procedure and follow their own separate rules instead: those arising from a negotiated workforce-planning agreement, from a plan de sauvegarde de l'emploi (a formal redundancy plan), or from a collective rupture conventionnelle agreement negotiated at company level.

Those alternative routes exist for situations where an employer is reorganizing multiple positions at once rather than negotiating a single, individual departure. An employee weighing a rupture conventionnelle against those larger mechanisms, or against an outright dismissal, is often better served by first understanding how dismissal for gross misconduct works, since that route excludes any negotiated indemnity altogether.

The Interview and the Signed Agreement

Before signing anything, the employer and employee must hold at least one interview (entretien) to discuss the principle and the terms of the termination, including the amount of the indemnity. Under article L1237-12, the employee may bring a colleague from the company or, where there is no staff representation, an outside adviser drawn from an official list. If the employee chooses to be assisted, the employer may then also be assisted, and in companies with fewer than 50 employees the employer's own assistance may come from an employer's organization or a peer employer in the same sector.

Once the interview or interviews conclude, the parties record the agreed terms, including the intended termination date and the indemnity amount, in a written convention that both sign. The convention identifies both parties, sets out the agreed indemnity, and states the proposed date the contract will end, which as noted above cannot arrive before the administrative review process has run its course.

Nothing in the procedure requires the parties to explain why they are ending the contract. The interview exists to agree the terms of the departure, not to establish fault or cause the way a dismissal procedure does.

The 15 Calendar Day Withdrawal Period

From the date the convention is signed by both parties, article L1237-13 gives each of them a separate 15 calendar day period to withdraw. This clock runs in calendar days, including weekends and public holidays, and starts the day after signature. Either party can exercise the right by sending a letter or another method that proves the date the other party received it. If neither side withdraws, the agreement moves forward to the next stage.

The Homologation Request to the DREETS

Once the withdrawal period expires without either party cancelling, the more diligent party, usually the employer, files a request for homologation with the administrative authority, the DREETS (Direction régionale de l'économie, de l'emploi, du travail et des solidarités). Under article L1237-14, the DREETS then has 15 working days from receipt of the request to review it. Working days exclude weekends and public holidays, which makes this a different clock from the calendar day withdrawal period that precedes it.

If the DREETS does not notify a decision within that 15 working day window, homologation is deemed acquired automatically and the authority loses jurisdiction over the file. Silence within the deadline is an approval, not a refusal and not a pending status.

Since 1 April 2022, the homologation request for a non-protected employee must be filed online through the TéléRC portal; the paper Cerfa form remains usable only by exception, where a party indicates to the administration that it is unable to use the online service. The employment contract cannot end before the day after homologation is granted or deemed acquired.

As an illustration only, not a description of any specific real matter: if an employer and employee sign a convention on Monday, 3 August 2026, the 15 calendar day withdrawal period would run from 4 August and expire at midnight on 18 August 2026. If neither side withdraws, the more diligent party could submit the TéléRC homologation request on 19 August 2026. The DREETS would then have 15 working days, roughly until 9 September 2026, to review it, and if it says nothing by then, homologation would be automatically acquired. The earliest the contract could actually end would be the day after that, so roughly five to six weeks typically separate signature from the contract's actual end date.

Protected Employees: Authorisation, Not Homologation

Employees who hold a protective mandate, such as staff representatives or union delegates, under articles L2411-1 and L2411-2 of the Code du travail, follow a different route. Under article L1237-15, their rupture conventionnelle is not simply homologated; it requires authorisation from the labor inspector (inspecteur du travail). The inspector must specifically verify that nothing connected to the employee's representative duties or union membership affected their consent to the agreement.

A protected employee's contract cannot end before the day after this authorisation is granted. The file also does not go through TéléRC; it uses the paper Cerfa n°14599, a different form from the n°14598 used in the ordinary homologation route for non-protected employees.

The same 15 calendar day withdrawal period under article L1237-13 still applies before the file is sent to the labor inspector. What changes for a protected employee is only the reviewing authority and the standard used to review the file, not the earlier interview and withdrawal steps, which follow the same sequence as for any other employee.

What Can Make a Rupture Conventionnelle Invalid

Because a rupture conventionnelle rests on genuine mutual consent, a court can set it aside where a vice du consentement (a defect of consent) is proven, such as fraud, error, or duress at the moment of signing. Whether that bar is met is fact specific and decided case by case.

Notably, the Cour de cassation has held that moral harassment (harcèlement moral) suffered by an employee does not, by itself, void a signed rupture conventionnelle. The employee must additionally show that the harassment actually produced a defect of consent at the time the agreement was signed; proof of harassment alone is not sufficient on its own.

Rupture Conventionnelle During Sick Leave

A rupture conventionnelle can be validly concluded while an employee's contract is suspended by sick leave, including leave connected to a workplace accident or an occupational illness, absent fraud or a proven defect of consent. The Cour de cassation confirmed this for accident du travail and maladie professionnelle leave in a 2014 decision, and for ordinary, non occupational sick leave in a 2026 decision, which also held that merely proposing a rupture conventionnelle during sick leave does not, on its own, suggest health-related discrimination.

Rupture Conventionnelle During Maternity Leave

The same principle extends to maternity leave. The Cour de cassation has held that a rupture conventionnelle can be validly signed during the maternity leave suspension period and during the protected weeks that follow it, again absent fraud or a proven defect of consent. Note the length of that protected window: article L1225-4 now protects for ten weeks after the maternity-leave period ends, extended from four weeks by the loi of 8 August 2016, so the older four-week figure still circulating online understates the current window by more than half. Article L1225-4's separate ban on a unilateral dismissal during that window does not itself extend to block a mutually agreed rupture conventionnelle.

The Indemnity Floor

Article L1237-13 sets a floor: the rupture conventionnelle indemnity can never be lower than the indemnité légale de licenciement, the statutory dismissal indemnity that would apply to the same employee. See severance pay for the underlying formula.

One frequently missed point: unlike the statutory dismissal indemnity, which requires eight months of continuous seniority with the same employer before it applies, the rupture conventionnelle indemnity carries no minimum seniority requirement of its own. It is due regardless of how long the employee has worked for the employer. Parties often assume the two indemnities share the same eight-month threshold; they do not. Full detail on how the amount is calculated, including worked examples, is covered on the mutual termination pay page.

Tax Treatment of the Indemnity

For income tax, the rupture conventionnelle indemnity is exempt up to the greatest of three thresholds: the legal or conventional indemnity amount, 50% of the total indemnity received, or twice the employee's gross pay for the calendar year before termination. Under article 80 duodecies of the Code général des impôts, this exemption is capped at six times the plafond annuel de la sécurité sociale (PASS), which is 288,360 EUR for 2026.

That six times PASS cap applies to both the ordinary dismissal indemnity and the rupture conventionnelle indemnity. It is a different, higher figure than the five times PASS cap that applies only to an indemnité de mise à la retraite, an employer-initiated retirement termination indemnity; the two caps cover different situations and should not be treated as interchangeable.

A separate rule matters for anyone nearing retirement age: if, on the date the contract actually ends, the employee is already entitled to draw a state-mandated retirement pension, the rupture conventionnelle indemnity loses the income tax exemption entirely and becomes taxable from the first euro. This turns on pension eligibility at that date, not on whether the employee has actually started claiming the pension.

Determining which of the three exemption thresholds applies, and confirming whether an employee is already pension-eligible as of the contract's end date, is ordinarily handled by the employer's payroll function when the indemnity is processed. Getting this wrong in either direction, treating a pension-eligible employee's indemnity as exempt, or under-applying the exemption for someone who is not yet pension-eligible, changes how much of the payment is subject to withholding.

Employer Contribution Rate in 2026

Article 15 of the loi de financement de la sécurité sociale (LFSS) for 2026 amended article L.137-12 of the Code de la sécurité sociale, replacing the single employer contribution rate on the socially exempt portion of a rupture conventionnelle (or mise à la retraite) indemnity, raising it from 30% to 40%.

This increase is reported to apply by reference to the contract's actual end date rather than the date the convention was signed, meaning an agreement signed in 2025 but ending in 2026 would fall under the new rate on that basis. That specific application mechanism could not be verified against a primary government source during this review, since URSSAF's own guidance pages were not reachable. Employers are advised to confirm the current mechanism and any related contribution details directly with URSSAF rather than relying on secondary reporting alone.

This contribution is paid by the employer on top of, and separately from, the indemnity itself. The rate increase changes what the employer owes the social security system; it does not reduce the amount the employee actually receives under the convention.

Rupture Conventionnelle and Unemployment Benefits

A rupture conventionnelle opens rights to the France Travail unemployment allowance (ARE), unlike a voluntary resignation, provided the employee meets the standard eligibility conditions for that allowance, including having worked long enough during the qualifying reference period. This is one of the main reasons employees favor a rupture conventionnelle over an outright resignation when a mutual exit is possible.

Disclaimer

This article summarizes French employment law as it stood on 19 July 2026 and is provided for general informational purposes only. It is not legal advice and does not create an advisor-client relationship. Rules governing rupture conventionnelle, applicable thresholds, and administrative procedures can change, and individual circumstances vary. Anyone considering or negotiating a rupture conventionnelle is encouraged to consult a French avocat, a comparable regulated professional, or the relevant DREETS or labor inspectorate for guidance specific to their situation.