Employment
Code du travail with 35-hour week and cause réelle et sérieuse
Dismissal requires a real and serious cause plus a prescribed procedure including a preliminary interview. The statutory working week is 35 hours, with overtime compensated.
Key rules
- Five weeks of paid annual leave is the statutory minimum.
- The conseil de prud'hommes hears individual disputes with elected employer and employee judges.
- The Macron scale caps unfair dismissal compensation by seniority.
Governing law
- Code du travail
- Ordonnances Macron (2017)
Penalties and consequences
- Indemnity scaled by seniority; nullity of dismissal removes the cap in discrimination cases
In practice
Procedural defects alone can make a dismissal irregular even where the underlying reason is sound, so the paper trail is decisive.