Paid Leave in France (Conges Payes): Entitlement, Accrual, and Sick Leave Rules

French employees build paid leave, called conges payes, at a standard rate of 2.5 jours ouvrables per month worked, for a total of 30 jours ouvrables, or five weeks, each year. Leave also accrues during many sick leave absences under a 2024 law, though a special claim window tied to pre 2024 illness has now closed for employees who remained employed.

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

Jurisdiction scope: This article covers paid leave (conges payes) under French national law, primarily the Code du travail. It does not cover other countries' leave systems, and specific rules can vary in Alsace Moselle, French overseas territories, or under a particular collective bargaining agreement.

The Basic Entitlement: 2.5 Days a Month, 30 Days a Year

Under Code du travail article L3141-3, an employee earns 2.5 jours ouvrables of paid leave for each month of actual work with the same employer. Over a full year, that adds up to 30 jours ouvrables, commonly described as five weeks of paid leave.

This is a statutory floor, not a ceiling. A collective bargaining agreement, a company agreement, or an individual employment contract can grant more generous leave, but none of them can lawfully grant less than the statutory minimum. The same floor and ceiling pattern shows up elsewhere in French labor law, including the default rates that apply to overtime pay absent a more specific agreement.

Not every month automatically produces a full 2.5 days. The entitlement is tied to periods of actual work, or to periods the law treats as equivalent to actual work, such as certain sick leave and family leave. Those equivalence rules are what make the sick leave changes described later in this article significant.

Jours Ouvrables vs Jours Ouvres: The Most Confusing Distinction in French Leave

French paid leave law uses two different units to count days, and mixing them up is the single most common source of confusion for employees trying to work out their balance.

Jours ouvrables are counted across every day of the week except the weekly rest day, generally Sunday, and any day the business is normally closed for a public holiday. In practice, this usually means Monday through Saturday, a six day counting week. This is the unit the Code du travail itself uses for the 2.5 day monthly accrual and the 30 day annual cap.

Jours ouvres, by contrast, count only the days actually worked at the business, typically Monday through Friday, a five day counting week. Many employers display leave balances to employees in jours ouvres because it maps more directly onto a normal work schedule and a payslip.

The two units describe the same underlying entitlement, just measured differently. Thirty jours ouvrables equals twenty five jours ouvres, and both equal five weeks of leave. A single week taken off work consumes six jours ouvrables but only five jours ouvres, because the jours ouvrables count includes the Saturday the employee would not have worked anyway. When partial months are involved, the arithmetic can produce a fraction that is then rounded in the employee's favor. Five months of work at 2.5 jours ouvrables per month, for example, produces 12.5 days, which is rounded up to 13 jours ouvrables. If a payslip figure looks different from the 30 day figure most people associate with French leave, the explanation is almost always this counting difference, not a shortfall in entitlement.

The Reference Period and Scheduling Leave

Paid leave accrues over a period de reference that, by default, runs from 1 June to 31 May. Some sectors, including construction and entertainment, use a different cycle running from 1 April to 31 March through an industry leave fund known as a caisse de conges.

The employer, after consulting the works council where one exists, sets the period during which employees actually take their leave and must communicate that period at least two months before it opens. Individual departure dates generally require at least one month of advance notice to set, and, absent exceptional operational circumstances, cannot be changed within one month of the scheduled departure. These notice periods exist precisely so an employee is not left guessing about when leave has been fixed or reshuffled.

Paid Leave and Sick Leave: Where Things Stand in 2026

For years, French law treated a workplace accident or occupational illness far more generously than an ordinary, non occupational illness when it came to earning paid leave during the absence. A law passed in 2024 narrowed that gap and, separately, opened a limited window for employees to claim leave retroactively. That window has since closed for one group of employees, while it remains open, on different terms, for another. Both positions matter, and confusing them can mislead a reader about whether they still have a claim.

The New Rule: Accrual During Non-Occupational Sick Leave

Loi n. 2024-364 du 22 avril 2024, a law adapting French law to European Union requirements, inserted a new article, L3141-5-1, into the Code du travail. It provides that paid leave accrues during a non occupational sick leave absence, meaning ordinary illness unrelated to work, at 2 jours ouvrables per month, capped at 24 jours ouvrables per reference period.

Before this law, an employee on ordinary sick leave generally did not build paid leave during that absence at all. The change was driven by European Union case law interpreting the Working Time Directive, which required France to bring its rules into line. Because of that origin, the new accrual right is not just forward looking. The law made it retroactive to 1 December 2009, meaning it can, in principle, reach back to sick leave periods from well over a decade ago.

The Two Year Claim Window for Employees Still Employed: Closed in April 2026

Because the new rule reached back to 2009, the law also had to address how employees could claim leave tied to sick leave that had already happened by the time the law took effect on 24 April 2024. For employees who were still employed by the same employer on that date, the law gave a two year period, running from 24 April 2024, to bring a court claim for leave tied to non occupational sick leave periods that occurred before the law's entry into force.

That two year window has closed. It ran out around the anniversary of the law's entry into force, in late April 2026, several months before this article was last verified. An employee who remained continuously employed with the same employer throughout that period can no longer open a new claim under this specific two year mechanism. The window was a one time opportunity tied to the law's transition, not an ongoing right, and it is no longer available.

Employees Who Have Since Left: The Three Year Prescription Still Applies

The closed window described above does not apply to everyone, and treating it as though it does would give a departed employee the wrong answer.

An employee who left the employer, whether the departure happened before 24 April 2024 or afterward, was never covered by that two year mechanism in the first place. Instead, a former employee's claim to leave tied to past sick leave periods falls under the ordinary rule that governs wage claims generally: the three year prescription set out in article L3245-1, running from the date the employee knew, or should have known, the facts allowing the claim, which in practice is generally tied to the end of their own contract.

Because this three year period runs from each person's individual departure date rather than from a single fixed calendar date, it does not close all at once the way the two year window for still employed staff did. An employee who left their job in 2024 remains within a three year period that extends well past 2026. An employee who left several years earlier may already be outside that same three year period. Whether a particular former employee still has time to act depends entirely on when their own contract ended, which this article cannot determine for any individual reader. Claims of this kind are often raised alongside the broader settlement of sums owed when a contract ends, including the final pay settlement an employer must provide.

Workplace Accidents and Occupational Illness: A More Favorable Regime, Now Uncapped

A sick leave absence caused by a workplace accident or an occupational illness, sometimes referred to by the French shorthand AT or MP, is treated more favorably than an ordinary illness. Under article L3141-5, leave accrues during this kind of absence at the full standard rate of 2.5 jours ouvrables per month, the same rate that applies to ordinary work.

For a long time, that favorable rate was subject to a cap limiting accrual to the first year of the absence. The 2024 law removed that cap, and the Cour de cassation confirmed, in a decision dated 2 October 2024 (Cass. soc., n. 23-14.806), that the old one year limit must be disregarded even for periods that occurred before the law changed, because it conflicted with rights guaranteed under the European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights. An employee absent for a workplace accident or occupational illness for longer than a year therefore continues to accrue paid leave at the full rate for the entire duration of the absence, with no cap tied to how long the absence lasts.

The Employer's Duty to Inform and the 15-Month Carryover

An employee who cannot take earned leave because of illness is not simply left to lose it. Under article L3141-19-3, an employer must inform a returning employee, within one month of their return to work, of the number of paid leave days available to them and the deadline for using those days.

That notice is what starts the clock on a carryover period. Under article L3141-19-1, once the employer has given this information, the employee has 15 months to use the leave that illness prevented them from taking during the normal leave taking period. If the employer never provides the required notice, the carryover period does not begin to run, which protects an employee from losing leave simply because their employer failed to flag it.

The Indemnite Compensatrice de Conges Payes at Contract End

When an employment contract ends, whether through resignation, dismissal, or a mutual agreement termination, any paid leave the employee earned but did not take does not simply disappear. The employer must pay an indemnite compensatrice de conges payes, a cash payment covering the unused leave, as part of the final amounts owed.

That payment is calculated under article L3141-24 using whichever of two methods produces the higher result for the employee: one tenth of the employee's total gross remuneration earned over the reference period, or the salary the employee would have continued to receive had they taken the leave instead. Periods of non occupational sick leave counted under the new L3141-5-1 rule are subject to a further detail: for the one tenth calculation, those periods are taken into account only up to 80 percent of the remuneration associated with them. This indemnity is distinct from other amounts an employee may be owed at contract end, such as severance pay in a dismissal, though all of these figures typically appear together on the same final statement.

Common questions about paid leave in France:

Disclaimer

This article is provided for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. French employment law, including the rules on paid leave and sick leave described above, is subject to change and to interpretation by French courts. For advice on a specific situation, consult a French employment lawyer (avocat en droit du travail) or the relevant labor authorities. For more on related French employment topics, see our overview of France employment law.