Your French company employs one person, perhaps two, and the relationship has just broken down in the worst possible way. The salesperson in Paris falsified expense reports, the technician refused a direct safety instruction in front of a client, or the assistant simply stopped coming to the office and stopped answering the phone. You run the company from London, New York, Dubai or Singapore, and your instinct is the instinct of your home jurisdiction: end the contract today, pay the month, move on. In France that single reflex can cost your company a year of salary. French law does not know employment at will, and misconduct, even proven misconduct, never authorises an employer to skip the procedure. The dismissal of a French employee hired on a CDI (contrat à durée indéterminée, the open-ended contract that is the default form of hiring in France) follows a mandatory choreography of delays, summons, hearings and reasoned letters, and the labour court, called the conseil de prud’hommes, enforces that choreography strictly against foreign employers who plead distance or ignorance of the rules.
This guide covers exactly one door out of the employment relationship: the disciplinary dismissal for misconduct, called licenciement disciplinaire, run from abroad by a foreign owner or a foreign-appointed manager. It explains the two-month clock that can silently kill your right to punish, the precautionary suspension that secures the business while the procedure runs, the summons, hearing and notification letters whose wording frames the entire future dispute, the exit payments that differ radically between ordinary and serious misconduct, and the worst-case price before the tribunal under the Macron scale as confirmed by two 2025 rulings of the Cour de cassation. It does not cover economic dismissals, trial-period exits or negotiated departures: the failed trial period, the ordinary dismissal and the negotiated exit called rupture conventionnelle are addressed in our companion guide to ending a first hire, and the hiring sequence itself, from the DPAE (déclaration préalable à l’embauche, the pre-hiring declaration) to the first payslip, is covered in our hiring guide for foreign companies. Read those first if the contract in question is still in its trial period, because the trial exit is faster and far cheaper than any dismissal.
I. How Do You Dismiss a French Employee for Misconduct Without Breaking the Procedure?
A. Why the two-month clock and the precautionary suspension decide everything before you write a word
The first question is not what the employee did but when you learned about it. French law provides that “Aucun fait fautif ne peut donner lieu à lui seul à l’engagement de poursuites disciplinaires au-delà d’un délai de deux mois à compter du jour où l’employeur en a eu connaissance, à moins que ce fait ait donné lieu dans le même délai à l’exercice de poursuites pénales.” This is Article L1332-4 of the Labour Code, and it means a foreign employer who discovers misconduct during a quarterly visit to Paris, returns home to think about it, consults, hesitates and acts in the third month has in most cases lost the right to use that fact at all. Knowledge runs from the day the employer, or a person with disciplinary authority such as the local manager, actually learns of the facts, not from the day the foreign shareholder reads about them in a report, yet judges examine this point closely and the employer carries the practical burden of showing when the clock started. The operational lesson is simple: the day misconduct is reported, open a dated file, record who knew what and when, preserve the evidence, and start the procedure within weeks, never months. A repeated or continuing pattern can restart the analysis for the new facts, but it never revives a stale fact on its own, and adding an old grievance to a fresh letter to make the file look heavier exposes the whole dismissal to challenge.
The second preliminary question is whether the employee can stay in the business while the procedure runs. Where the alleged facts make it impossible to keep the person on site, for example suspected theft of stock, access to client funds, harassment of a colleague or a safety-critical refusal, the employer can order an immediate precautionary suspension known as mise à pied conservatoire, which removes the employee from the workplace with pay while the disciplinary process unfolds. This suspension is not itself the punishment: French law defines that “Constitue une sanction toute mesure, autre que les observations verbales, prise par l’employeur à la suite d’un agissement du salarié considéré par l’employeur comme fautif, que cette mesure soit de nature à affecter immédiatement ou non la présence du salarié dans l’entreprise, sa fonction, sa carrière ou sa rémunération” (Article L1331-1 of the Labour Code), and it separately provides that “Lorsque les faits reprochés au salarié ont rendu indispensable une mesure conservatoire de mise à pied à effet immédiat, aucune sanction définitive relative à ces faits ne peut être prise sans que la procédure prévue à l’article L. 1332-2 ait été respectée” (Article L1332-3 of the Labour Code). In practice this means the suspension letter must be presented as strictly precautionary and paid, and the full disciplinary procedure must still be run to its end before any dismissal is notified. A foreign owner who suspends without pay pending dismissal has just imposed an unlawful sanction and handed the employee the first exhibit of the tribunal file. Keep the suspended employee paid, cut system access through a documented IT ticket rather than an accusatory email, and instruct the local team in writing to have no contact about the facts with the employee outside the formal procedure.
Before drafting anything, grade the misconduct honestly, because the grade drives the entire price of the exit. French practice distinguishes three levels: ordinary misconduct (faute simple), which justifies dismissal but leaves all exit payments due; serious misconduct (faute grave), which is behaviour so severe that it makes any continuation of the employment relationship impossible, even during a notice period, and which strips the statutory severance and the payment in lieu of notice; and gross misconduct with intent to harm (faute lourde), which additionally opens claims for damages against the employee. Only a judge ultimately fixes the grade, and tribunals reclassify aggressively: facts a foreign founder experiences as obviously serious, such as rudeness to a manager or a single unjustified absence, are routinely downgraded to ordinary misconduct by French judges, while theft, violence, proven fraud and deliberate safety violations generally sustain the serious grade. The safe discipline is therefore to build the file for the grade below the one you hope for, gather contemporaneous proof for every allegation, dates, witnesses, logs, client complaints, bailiff reports where appropriate, and never allege intent to harm unless documents prove it. An inflated grade that collapses before the tribunal does not merely cost the severance you thought you had saved; it colours the employer’s credibility for the whole case, including on the reality of the facts themselves.
One structural warning matters specifically for small foreign-owned companies. Where the misconduct also involves a criminal dimension, for example theft, forgery or breach of trust, the two-month disciplinary clock can be extended where criminal proceedings are brought within the same period, but the employment procedure and the criminal complaint are two separate tracks with separate calendars. File the criminal complaint promptly if the facts warrant it, through French counsel, and do not suspend the employment procedure while waiting for the police or the prosecutor: the tribunal judges the dismissal on the employment file as it stood on the day of notification, and a dismissal letter stating that the employer awaits the outcome of the criminal investigation reads as an admission that the employer was not yet sure of its own facts. Conversely, never threaten the employee with a criminal complaint to extract a resignation or a negotiated exit; that pressure, once documented, can void the resignation and taint any subsequent agreement. Run both tracks cleanly, keep them in separate files, and let each one stand on its own evidence.
B. How the summons, the hearing and the notification letter frame the whole future dispute
Once the file is preserved and the clock is under control, the procedure itself is a sequence of three locked steps, and each step has its own delay and its own formalities. The first step is the written summons to a preliminary meeting, called convocation à un entretien préalable. The statute provides that “L’employeur qui envisage de licencier un salarié le convoque, avant toute décision, à un entretien préalable. La convocation est effectuée par lettre recommandée ou par lettre remise en main propre contre décharge. Cette lettre indique l’objet de la convocation. L’entretien préalable ne peut avoir lieu moins de cinq jours ouvrables après la présentation de la lettre recommandée ou la remise en main propre de la lettre de convocation.” This is Article L1232-2 of the Labour Code. For a foreign employer this paragraph contains four traps. First, the summons must go by registered letter, called lettre recommandée, or by hand delivery against a signed receipt; an email, a phone call, a message on a collaboration tool or a letter sent by ordinary post does not satisfy the text. Second, the letter must state its purpose, and in a disciplinary case the disciplinary procedure adds that “Lorsque l’employeur envisage de prendre une sanction, il convoque le salarié en lui précisant l’objet de la convocation” (Article L1332-2 of the Labour Code), so the summons should identify the contemplated sanction, dismissal in this case, without already announcing it as decided. Third, the five working days, called cinq jours ouvrables, run from presentation of the registered letter or hand delivery, and Sundays and public holidays do not count as working days; counting from the sending date instead of the presentation date is the classic foreign-employer error that voids the timetable. Fourth, the letter must inform the employee of the right to be assisted, because “Lors de son audition, le salarié peut se faire assister par une personne de son choix appartenant au personnel de l’entreprise” (Article L1232-4 of the Labour Code), and where the company has no staff representatives, which is the normal situation of a one-employee subsidiary, the employee may instead be assisted by an outside employee adviser chosen from an official departmental list, called conseiller du salarié, whose contact details must be communicated with the summons. Omitting the assistance notice is a standalone procedural irregularity that costs money even when the misconduct itself is proven.
The second step is the preliminary meeting itself, and foreign owners must resist the temptation to handle it remotely or to delegate it carelessly. The statute states that “Au cours de l’entretien préalable, l’employeur indique les motifs de la décision envisagée et recueille les explications du salarié.” This is Article L1232-3 of the Labour Code. The meeting has one purpose only: the employer states precisely what is alleged, and listens to the employee’s explanations before any decision is taken. It is not a negotiation, not a mediation and not the moment to propose a resignation to avoid dismissal. In a company run from abroad, the meeting should be conducted by a person holding a clear written delegation from the legal representative, ideally with French counsel present or on call, and everything said should be noted contemporaneously: date, place, persons present, facts put forward, documents shown, explanations given. If the employee does not attend, the procedure continues lawfully, but the absence must be recorded and the employer must still wait out the timetable before notifying. If the employee attends with an outside adviser, treat the adviser with full procedural respect; obstructing or intimidating the adviser creates a separate ground of irregularity. Never announce the dismissal at the end of the meeting, never hand over a pre-signed dismissal letter simply to save time, and never let the minutes suggest the outcome was decided before the summons was sent, because the tribunal reads the file backwards from the letter and any sign of a pre-decided outcome converts a solid file into an unfair dismissal.
The third step is the notification, and the notification letter is the single most important document of the entire operation. The statute provides that “Lorsque l’employeur décide de licencier un salarié, il lui notifie sa décision par lettre recommandée avec avis de réception. Cette lettre comporte l’énoncé du ou des motifs invoqués par l’employeur. Elle ne peut être expédiée moins de deux jours ouvrables après la date prévue de l’entretien préalable au licenciement auquel le salarié a été convoqué.” This is Article L1232-6 of the Labour Code. Three points decide cases here. First, notification goes exclusively by registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt, called lettre recommandée avec avis de réception; handing the letter over in person or sending it by email adds risk and should never replace the registered letter. Second, the letter must state the employer’s reasons, and only those reasons will be judged: the Paris Court of Appeal recalled in a May 2026 dismissal judgment that “Il résulte en outre des articles L. 1232-1 et L. 1232-6 du code du travail que la lettre de licenciement fixe les limites du litige en ce qui concerne les griefs articulés à l’encontre du salarié et que le juge a l’obligation d’examiner l’ensemble des griefs invoqués dans la lettre de licenciement” (Paris Court of Appeal, Pôle 6, Chamber 7, 7 May 2026, case no. 23/01180, full decision on courdecassation.fr). Every grievance that matters must therefore appear in the letter with dates, places and precise facts, and no grievance outside the letter can later rescue the dismissal. Third, the letter cannot be posted until at least two full working days after the scheduled date of the preliminary meeting, even if the meeting went well or the employee failed to appear. Posting on the evening of the meeting, a frequent error when the foreign owner wants the matter closed before a flight home, is a dated, provable irregularity printed on the envelope itself. The administration publishes standard notification models, and using them as a skeleton while keeping the factual statement fully customised to the file is the prudent course.
Two cross-cutting duties govern the whole sequence. First, every dismissal for personal reasons must rest on a real and serious cause: “Tout licenciement pour motif personnel est motivé dans les conditions définies par le présent chapitre. Il est justifié par une cause réelle et sérieuse.” This is Article L1232-1 of the Labour Code. Real means the facts exist, are attributable to the employee and are sufficiently serious; serious means they genuinely disrupt the business and justify ending the contract rather than a lesser response. Vague formulas such as loss of confidence, incompatibility of temperament or professional inadequacy documented by nothing will not survive a judge, and in a disciplinary dismissal the letter must describe verifiable facts, not character assessments. Second, the procedure must be run by the book even where the employee’s behaviour is outrageous. French judges separate the substance from the form without mercy: gross theft established by video evidence still produces compensation for procedural breach if the five-day period was short by one day or the assistance notice was missing. For the foreign employer the practical consequence is organisational: appoint one person in France, a local manager with written delegation or instructed counsel, who owns the calendar, keeps the originals of every registered-letter receipt, and refuses any shortcut proposed from headquarters. Procedure is not bureaucracy in this field; it is the price of the right to dismiss.
II. What Will the Exit Cost and How Do You Survive a Tribunal Claim?
A. How severance, notice, leave and the three final documents differ between ordinary and serious misconduct
The price of the exit turns entirely on the grade of the misconduct, which is why the honest grading recommended above matters in euros. Where the dismissal rests on ordinary misconduct, the employee keeps every standard exit right. The first is the statutory severance, called indemnité de licenciement. The statute provides that “Le salarié titulaire d’un contrat de travail à durée indéterminée, licencié alors qu’il compte 8 mois d’ancienneté ininterrompus au service du même employeur, a droit, sauf en cas de faute grave, à une indemnité de licenciement.” This is Article L1234-9 of the Labour Code. Note the two thresholds inside that single sentence: eight months of continuous service opens the right, and serious misconduct closes it. The statutory floor is computed by regulation, and the regulation states that “L’indemnité de licenciement ne peut être inférieure aux montants suivants : 1° Un quart de mois de salaire par année d’ancienneté pour les années jusqu’à dix ans ; 2° Un tiers de mois de salaire par année d’ancienneté pour les années à partir de dix ans.” This is Article R1234-2 of the Labour Code. Take a concrete first-hire example: a gross monthly reference salary of 3,000 euros and three years of service gives one quarter of a month per year, or 750 euros per year, for a statutory minimum of 2,250 euros. The applicable collective agreement, called convention collective, often improves on this floor, and the employment contract may add its own indemnity, so the employer’s payroll provider, usually the expert-comptable (the French chartered accountant who commonly runs payroll for small companies), must compute the highest applicable amount, not merely the statutory minimum. Underpaying the severance by relying on the statutory formula while the branch agreement grants more is a frequent and easily avoided loss.
The second standard right is the notice period, called préavis, or the payment in lieu of notice, called indemnité compensatrice de préavis. The statute provides that “Lorsque le salarié n’exécute pas le préavis, il a droit, sauf s’il a commis une faute grave, à une indemnité compensatrice.” This is Article L1234-5 of the Labour Code. In an ordinary-misconduct dismissal the employee therefore either works the contractual or collectively agreed notice period or receives its cash equivalent, while in a dismissal for serious misconduct there is neither notice to work nor payment in lieu, because the misconduct itself is defined as making any continuation impossible. Accrued paid leave, called congés payés, follows its own logic: untaken leave is always paid out as an indemnity, including in serious-misconduct cases, with only the narrow gross-misconduct category historically allowing an employer to dispute it. Prorated bonuses, overtime back-pay and any salary balance complete the cash exit. For the foreign owner the key discipline is to have every amount computed and double-checked by the payroll provider before the notification letter goes out, because the final payslips must be right on the day the contract ends, and correcting them six months later under tribunal pressure always costs more than computing them properly now.
The third and most underestimated part of the exit is paperwork: three documents must be delivered at the end of the contract, and each one carries its own sanction if missing or wrong. The employment certificate, called certificat de travail, is mandatory, since “A l’expiration du contrat de travail, l’employeur délivre au salarié un certificat dont le contenu est déterminé par voie réglementaire.” This is Article L1234-19 of the Labour Code. It states the dates of employment and the positions held, and nothing else: adding comments on the misconduct, however truthful, exposes the employer to damages. The final settlement receipt, called reçu pour solde de tout compte, itemises every sum paid on exit, and the statute gives it a special six-month regime: “Le reçu pour solde de tout compte peut être dénoncé dans les six mois qui suivent sa signature, délai au-delà duquel il devient libératoire pour l’employeur pour les sommes qui y sont mentionnées.” This is Article L1234-20 of the Labour Code. The six-month denunciation window means the receipt protects the employer only for the sums it actually lists, and only after six months without challenge, so the itemisation must be exhaustive and exact to the euro. The third document is the employment-centre attestation that lets the former employee claim unemployment benefits: “L’employeur délivre au salarié, au moment de l’expiration ou de la rupture du contrat de travail, les attestations et justifications qui lui permettent d’exercer ses droits aux prestations mentionnées à l’article L. 5421-2 et transmet sans délai ces mêmes attestations à l’opérateur France Travail.” This is Article R1234-9 of the Labour Code, where France Travail is the public employment operator, formerly called Pôle emploi, that pays the unemployment benefit known as ARE (allocation d’aide au retour à l’emploi). A late or incorrect attestation delays the former employee’s benefits and generates damages that tribunals award almost automatically, so the attestation should be filed electronically without delay, and the payroll entries behind it, the DSN (déclaration sociale nominative, the monthly digital payroll return), must be consistent with the sums in the final settlement.
Distance creates specific failure modes on all three documents, and each has a concrete fix. The foreign legal representative who cannot sign in France should give a written delegation to the local manager or to counsel for the exit paperwork, because an unsigned certificate or an attestation signed by a person with no authority invites challenge. The final sums should be wired from the French company’s account with references matching the settlement receipt, not netted informally against alleged damage to the company, since French law prohibits the employer from acting as its own judge by offsetting claimed damages against wages owed. Any genuine counterclaim for harm caused by the employee, for example the cost of the fraud, belongs in a separate demand or a separate court action, documented independently, never as a line deducted from the payslip. Finally, keep the originals and the electronic filing confirmations of all three documents for at least the duration of the tribunal limitation period discussed below: the employer who can produce a complete, consistent, dated exit file on the first day of litigation negotiates from strength, while the employer who must reconstruct it under judicial pressure has already lost the negotiation.
B. How the Macron scale, the twelve-month clock and the Paris tribunal price the worst case
When the employee challenges the dismissal, the dispute goes to the conseil de prud’hommes, the elected labour tribunal with jurisdiction over individual employment disputes, and for a Paris-based hire that means in practice the Paris labour tribunal, with proceedings conducted entirely in French. The employee asks the tribunal to find the dismissal without real and serious cause, and the statute frames the remedy as follows: “Si le licenciement d’un salarié survient pour une cause qui n’est pas réelle et sérieuse, le juge peut proposer la réintégration du salarié dans l’entreprise, avec maintien de ses avantages acquis.” This is the opening of Article L1235-3 of the Labour Code. Where either side refuses reinstatement, and in practice at least one side always does, the judge awards the employee an indemnity within a statutory scale, called barème Macron, whose minimum and maximum are expressed in months of gross salary by years of service, with a lower track for companies with fewer than eleven employees. The scale is the single number that should discipline every settlement discussion: it caps the unfair-dismissal indemnity, it rises with seniority, and for a first hire with short service it is modest, which is precisely why early negotiated exits are often cheaper than litigated dismissals once legal fees and management time are counted. The administration provides an official simulator for the scale on service-public.fr, and any settlement proposal should be tested against it before it is made.
The worst-case price was settled by the Cour de cassation in two 2025 rulings that every foreign employer should understand, because employees and their counsel spent years arguing that the scale could be set aside in favour of unlimited judge-assessed damages. In the first case, the social chamber quashed an appeal decision that had awarded an amount above the scale maximum by invoking the employee’s personal situation, holding that “il lui appartenait seulement d’apprécier la situation concrète du salarié pour déterminer le montant de l’indemnité due entre les montants minimaux et maximaux déterminés par l’article L. 1235-3 du code du travail” (Cour de cassation, social chamber, 9 April 2025, appeal no. 24-13.958, decision no. 373 F-D, full decision on courdecassation.fr). In the second case, decided six weeks later on the same reasoning, the Court quashed another above-scale award and repeated that “il lui appartenait seulement d’apprécier la situation concrète du salarié pour déterminer le montant de l’indemnité due entre les montants minimaux et maximaux déterminés par l’article L. 1235-3 du code du travail” (Cour de cassation, social chamber, 21 May 2025, appeal no. 24-10.362, decision no. 524 F-D, full decision on courdecassation.fr). The message is now stable: the judge assesses the employee’s concrete situation to fix the indemnity inside the scale, not to escape it. For the foreign employer this is genuinely good news, because it makes the maximum exposure computable from the day of dismissal. It is not, however, a licence for sloppy procedure: procedural breaches carry their own indemnities outside or alongside the scale, nullity cases such as harassment or discrimination-based dismissals sit outside the scale with a six-month minimum, and a dismissal whose letter states no usable reason loses on substance whatever the scale says.
The second number that governs litigation is the deadline. Employment-tribunal claims arising from the termination itself are subject to a short limitation period: “Toute action portant sur la rupture du contrat de travail se prescrit par douze mois à compter de la notification de la rupture.” This is Article L1471-1 of the Labour Code. The twelve months run from notification of the termination, so a foreign employer who dismissed in September 2026 lives under the threat of a claim until September 2027, while claims about performance of the contract, such as unpaid overtime or bonuses, have their own two-year period running from knowledge of the facts. The practical consequences are threefold. First, preserve the complete file, summons receipts, meeting notes, notification receipt, payroll records, exit documents, evidence of the misconduct, for well beyond the twelve months, because the claim often arrives in month eleven. Second, calendar the twelve-month anniversary and use it: settlement leverage shifts as the deadline approaches on both sides. Third, never assume that silence means acceptance; French employees frequently consult a lawyer or a union adviser months after the exit, and the claim arrives as a formal summons, called assignation, with no prior warning letter. The employer that kept a clean file answers calmly; the employer that discarded the receipts instructions to counsel in panic.
Defending from abroad is entirely possible, but it must be organised before the summons arrives. The company needs a French address for service that is actually monitored, normally the registered office, called siège social, or counsel’s office under a proper mandate, because tribunal papers served at the company’s seat while the founder is on another continent still produce default effects if ignored. Representation before the labour tribunal is handled by a French employment lawyer, called avocat, and the foreign owner should expect at least a conciliation hearing followed by a full hearing, with the whole proceedings in French and strict rules on the exchange of exhibits, called pièces, and legal submissions, called conclusions. Two defences win most employer cases: the letter states precise, dated, proven facts that the exhibits corroborate one by one, and the calendar of summons, meeting and notification is irreproachable to the day. Everything else, character references for the founder, explanations of foreign business culture, comparisons with the law of the home country, carries no weight with the tribunal and should never appear in the file. Budget realistically from the start: counsel fees across conciliation and judgment, the worst-case scale indemnity, the procedural risk premium, and the management time of whoever must testify, then compare that total honestly with a negotiated exit while the window for negotiation is still open.
That comparison deserves a final word, because the disciplinary dismissal is not always the right door even when misconduct is real. Where the evidence is thin, the two-month clock has already run, or the grade will likely collapse from serious to ordinary, a negotiated termination by mutual agreement, called rupture conventionnelle, approved by the labour administration, often costs less than a dismissal that loses at trial: it guarantees the employee the statutory severance floor plus unemployment rights, it buys legal certainty through the administration’s approval, called homologation, and it closes the file in weeks instead of years. The companion guide to ending a first hire explains that route in detail. The disciplinary dismissal remains the right instrument where the facts are grave, fresh and provable, the file is complete, and the company needs the protective effect of an immediate exit without severance or notice. Choosing between the two is a business decision with legal pricing, and it should be taken with counsel on the basis of the scale simulator, the twelve-month calendar and an unsentimental grading of the evidence, not on the basis of anger at what the employee did. Anger is the most expensive adviser in French employment litigation.
Conclusion
A disciplinary dismissal run from abroad succeeds or fails on five disciplines that a foreign employer can impose from day one. Learn the misconduct early and act inside the two-month period, because a stale fact cannot support any sanction. Where the employee cannot stay on site, order a paid precautionary suspension and run the full procedure anyway, because the suspension never replaces the procedure. Summon by registered letter with the purpose stated and the assistance notice included, hold a genuine hearing where the employer states the allegations and records the explanations, then notify by registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt that states every material grievance with dates and facts, respecting the five-day and two-day intervals to the day. Pay the exit according to the honest grade of the misconduct, deliver the three final documents exactly, and keep the complete file past the twelve-month challenge period. Price the worst case with the Macron scale as confirmed by the Cour de cassation in its April and May 2025 rulings, and compare it coolly with a negotiated exit before committing to litigation. None of this requires a presence in France; all of it requires organisation, calendars and counsel. The companies that lose before the prud’hommes are rarely those with the worst facts. They are those with the worst files.
Need a quick opinion on your case
Dismissing a French employee for misconduct from abroad turns on your two-month clock, your summons and notification letters, the grade of the fault and the severance computation. Our firm offers a telephone consultation within 48 hours with a lawyer of the firm to review your evidence, secure the procedure and price the exit before the next deadline. Call +33 6 46 60 58 22 or write through our contact page with your documents attached. For Paris and Île-de-France employers, we handle hearings before the Paris labour tribunal and advise in English from the first call.