Since 1 January 2021, a British citizen who takes a salaried job in France is no longer an EU worker exercising free movement. You are a third-country national, and that single change rewrites the whole hiring sequence: before any French employment contract can lawfully start, your future employer must obtain an autorisation de travail (work authorisation) for you, and you must hold the matching visa and residence permit. The contract alone authorises nothing. The good news is that the procedure is now fully online, decided on published criteria, and a refusal can be challenged — first by administrative appeal, then before the administrative court. The bad news is that starting work without the authorisation exposes both sides: the employer to administrative fines, criminal prosecution and the loss of social-charge relief, and the employee to dismissal and removal proceedings.

This guide explains the salaried route only — the classic hire on a French payroll, whether on a permanent contract (contrat à durée indéterminée, CDI) or a fixed-term contract (contrat à durée déterminée, CDD). It does not cover setting up your own company or registering as self-employed, which follow different rules. It walks through who applies and how, which residence permit follows which contract, how to overturn a refusal, and what unlawful employment really costs, with the exact statutory texts and two recent Cour de cassation rulings that every British hire and every hiring employer should know. Where a French term appears for the first time, its English meaning follows in brackets.

I. Can a British citizen still be hired on a French payroll after Brexit, and what must the employer obtain first?

A. Do you need an autorisation de travail before the contract starts, and who applies for it?

Yes, without exception for newly arriving British hires. The rule is stated bluntly in the Labour Code. Article L. 5221-2 of the Code du travail (Labour Code) provides: “Pour entrer en France en vue d’y exercer une profession salariée, l’étranger présente : 1° Les documents et visas exigés par les conventions internationales et les règlements en vigueur ; 2° Un contrat de travail visé par l’autorité administrative ou une autorisation de travail.” In plain English: to enter France to take paid employment, a foreign national must show the required documents and visas plus either an employment contract endorsed (visé) by the administrative authority or a work authorisation. For a British citizen arriving after Brexit, that means the employer-side step comes first and the visa second — reversing the reflex many hires have of signing the contract and sorting out paperwork later.

The same requirement applies once you are already in France. Article L. 5221-5 of the Code du travail provides: “Un étranger autorisé à séjourner en France ne peut exercer une activité professionnelle salariée en France sans avoir obtenu au préalable l’autorisation de travail mentionnée au 2° de l’ article L. 5221-2 .” Even lawful residence is not enough on its own: no salaried work without prior work authorisation. A British spouse who followed a partner to France on a family permit, or a student switching to employment, is caught by the same sentence.

One narrow but important exception exists for British residents protected by the EU–UK Withdrawal Agreement — those who were already lawfully resident before 1 January 2021 and hold a Withdrawal Agreement residence permit (carte de séjour Accord de retrait du Royaume-Uni). Their permit itself carries the right to work, and no separate autorisation de travail is needed. If that is your situation, the rest of this article is background reading rather than your procedure. Everyone else — every newly hired arrival from London, Manchester or Edinburgh — goes through the employer-led application.

It is the employer who applies, not the employee. Since April 2021 the application is filed exclusively online on the ANEF platform (Administration numérique pour les étrangers en France, the Home Office’s digital portal for foreign nationals), through the employer’s account. The file is instructed by the DREETS (direction régionale de l’économie, de l’emploi, du travail et des solidarités, the regional authority for economy, employment, labour and solidarity, formerly the Direccte), and the decision is taken by the préfet (prefect, the State’s representative in the département). Your employer will need to upload your passport or identity document, your current residence document if you hold one, the draft employment contract, evidence that the vacancy was advertised to the French and European labour market, and company documents. The official English-language guidance describing each situation is published on the service-public.fr page on the autorisation de travail for foreign employees, with the online application walkthrough alongside it.

On what grounds can the prefect say yes or no? The criteria are published and the employer should build the file around them from day one. Whether you are already in France or still in the United Kingdom, the administration examines the reality of the hiring company and the post, the suitability of your profile, the salary offered, and — the ground that sinks most files — the employment situation (situation de l’emploi): if workers already present in France could fill the vacancy, the authorisation may be refused as opposable employment-market conditions. The salary must reach at least the SMIC (salaire minimum interprofessionnel de croissance, the French statutory minimum wage) or the higher minimum set by the applicable collective agreement (convention collective). As the service-public.fr page on how authorisations are granted puts it, remuneration cannot be lower than the SMIC or the collectively agreed wage where that is higher. A British hire paid below the threshold, or hired for a post with no genuine economic substance in the company, will be refused — and the refusal will say so.

The employer also carries a standing verification duty that many British-facing companies discover too late. Article L. 5221-8 of the Code du travail provides: “L’employeur s’assure auprès des administrations territorialement compétentes de l’existence du titre autorisant l’étranger à exercer une activité salariée en France, sauf si cet étranger est inscrit sur la liste des demandeurs d’emploi tenue par l’institution mentionnée à l’article L. 5312-1 .” Before the first day of work, the employer must check with the competent local authority that the foreign hire actually holds a document authorising salaried work — unless the person is registered as a jobseeker with France Travail (the public employment service, formerly Pôle emploi). Keep the prefectoral reply: it is the employer’s proof of diligence if the document later turns out to be forged (more on the forgery defence below). The UK side confirms the same starting point: the official gov.uk Living in France guidance directs British citizens to check which visa or residence permit they need before moving, including for work, via the France-Visas portal.

B. Which contract leads to which residence permit: salarié, travailleur temporaire, or a multi-year card?

The work authorisation and the residence permit (titre de séjour) are two separate documents, and the order matters: authorisation first, permit second. Once the prefect grants the autorisation de travail, the British hire applies for the long-stay visa equivalent to a residence permit (visa de long séjour valant titre de séjour, VLS-TS) at the French consulate covering their UK home, enters France, and validates the visa online within three months. The contract type then dictates which card is issued at the préfecture.

Hired on a CDI — the open-ended contract that is the normal form of employment under French law — you receive a one-year temporary residence card marked “salarié” (employee). Article L. 421-1 of the CESEDA (Code de l’entrée et du séjour des étrangers et du droit d’asile, the Code on Entry and Residence of Foreigners and Asylum) provides: “L’étranger qui exerce une activité salariée sous contrat de travail à durée indéterminée se voit délivrer une carte de séjour temporaire portant la mention “salarié” d’une durée maximale d’un an. La délivrance de cette carte de séjour est subordonnée à la détention préalable d’une autorisation de travail, dans les conditions prévues par les articles L. 5221-2 et suivants du code du travail .” Note the explicit chain: no prior work authorisation, no salarié card. The same article adds a safety net many British families rely on without knowing it: if you are involuntarily deprived of employment (privé d’emploi involontaire), the card is extended by one year, and at the following renewal the prefect decides on residence for a period matching the unemployment-benefit rights you have accrued. Losing the job does not automatically mean losing the right to stay — but you must register, claim, and document.

Hired on a CDD, a seasonal contract or a short posting, the corresponding card is the “travailleur temporaire” (temporary worker) permit, tied to the contract’s duration. The logic is identical — prior authorisation, then the card — but the permit dies with the job unless a new authorisation and a change of status (changement de statut) are secured. British hires on successive short contracts should therefore plan the CDI transition early rather than stacking temporary cards.

After the first year, the system opens towards stability. Article L. 421-2 of the CESEDA provides: “Par dérogation à l’article L. 433-6, l’étranger qui sollicite la délivrance d’une carte de séjour pluriannuelle portant la mention “salarié” et qui est titulaire d’une carte de séjour délivrée pour un autre motif bénéficie d’une carte de séjour temporaire d’une durée d’un an portant la mention demandée lorsque les conditions de délivrance de cette carte sont remplies.” In practice, a British employee who completes a first year as salarié and still meets the conditions can move onto the multi-year card (carte de séjour pluriannuelle), typically valid for four years. The bridge requires continuous employment, stable resources and, where applicable, evidence of integration — so keep every payslip (bulletin de salaire), the employer’s attestations and proof of address from month one.

Two further conditions deserve a frank word because they surprise British applicants. First, long-term settlement carries a language expectation. Article L. 5221-3 of the Code du travail provides: “L’étranger qui souhaite entrer en France en vue d’y exercer une profession salariée et qui manifeste la volonté de s’y installer durablement atteste d’une connaissance suffisante de la langue française sanctionnée par une validation des acquis de l’expérience ou s’engage à l’acquérir après son installation en France.” If you present yourself as settling permanently, you must either demonstrate sufficient French or formally commit to acquiring it after arrival. Enrolment in French classes is not decorative; it is evidential. Second, if your British family joins you, their residence is a separate procedure (family reunification, regroupement familial, or accompanying-family permits), each with its own resources and housing conditions — do not assume the salarié card covers the household.

A final boundary for high earners and intra-group moves: France offers a “passeport talent” (talent passport) multi-year permit for qualified employees, researchers, artists and certain posted profiles, with its own salary thresholds and a procedure that partly bypasses the standard labour-market test. If your package exceeds roughly twice the SMIC or your UK employer is posting you to a French subsidiary, ask your adviser whether the talent route fits better than the classic salarié track. It is still employment, still needs prior authorisation in most sub-categories, and still ends in a refusal that can be challenged — which is where this guide now turns.

II. What happens when the prefecture says no, and what does working without authorisation cost?

A. How do you challenge a work authorisation refusal: gracious appeal, hierarchical appeal, and the administrative court?

A refusal is not the end of the road, but the clock starts immediately, and the employer — as applicant — must act alongside you. The decision arrives as an express written refusal from the prefect, or as silence: if the prefecture has not replied two months after a complete application, the silence itself counts as an implied refusal (refus implicite). In both cases the remedy ladder published by the administration is the same. As the service-public.fr guidance on refusals states, within two months of the refusal you may lodge an administrative appeal (recours administratif): a gracious appeal (recours gracieux, asking the prefect to reconsider) before the prefect and/or a hierarchical appeal (recours hiérarchique, asking the superior authority to overrule) before the Minister of the Interior. Where the prefect never answered, the two-month window runs from the date the implied refusal crystallised — two months after filing.

These administrative appeals are free, require no lawyer, and above all buy a second look at the file. Most refusals turn on curable defects: a salary a fraction below the collective minimum, a vacancy advertised for too short a period, a missing company balance sheet, or a profile-match argument never properly made. The gracious appeal is the moment to cure: add the amended contract at the correct salary, attach the extended advertising evidence, file the accountant’s certificate on the company’s activity, and answer the employment-situation objection with specifics — regional shortage-list (liste des métiers en tension) classification, failed recruitment attempts, specialised skills. If the prefect maintains the refusal, or stays silent for a further two months (a second implied refusal), the file moves to court.

The judicial remedy is the appeal for excess of power (recours pour excès de pouvoir) before the administrative tribunal (tribunal administratif) of the prefecture’s area, to be filed within two months of the express or implied rejection of the administrative appeal. The service-public.fr page on administrative appeals sets out the general framework. Before the tribunal, the employer’s lawyer typically pleads three lines: defective reasoning (défaut de motivation), error of fact (the salary, the advertising, the company’s activity were misread), and error of law or manifest error of assessment on the employment situation (the prefect applied the labour-market test mechanically to a shortage occupation). Tribunal proceedings take many months, so where the hire is urgent, counsel may combine the main appeal with an emergency suspension application (référé-suspension) — admissible only if urgency is shown and a serious doubt about legality is raised. Success rates depend entirely on the file’s quality, which is why the ANEF application should have been built like a court exhibit from the start.

Two warnings run alongside any challenge. First, you must not start work while the appeals run unless a provisional document expressly allows it — most refusal situations confer no right to work pending judgment, and working anyway converts a curable administrative dispute into unlawful employment with the sanctions described below. Second, a British national with no other residence basis who stays on after a final refusal may be served with an order to leave France (obligation de quitter le territoire français, OQTF), often with a re-entry ban. The refusal challenge and the residence position must therefore be handled together: the lawyer checks whether a parallel residence application, a change of project, or a return to the UK with a fresh consular application is the safer course while the tribunal case proceeds. Readers facing the residence side of that equation can usefully compare our companion guide on when a British national becomes French tax resident and what happens when both tax offices claim you, because taking up French employment normally shifts tax residence too — a second front the household should anticipate.

B. What do unlawful employment and unlawful work cost the employer and the employee?

The prohibition is absolute on paper. Article L. 8251-1 of the Code du travail provides: “Nul ne peut, directement ou indirectement, embaucher, conserver à son service ou employer pour quelque durée que ce soit un étranger non muni du titre l’autorisant à exercer une activité salariée en France.” No one may hire, keep in service or employ, for any duration, a foreign national without the document authorising salaried work. “For any duration” includes the trial period (période d’essai), the paid “test week”, and the friendly arrangement of starting Monday while the ANEF receipt is still pending. Labour inspectors (inspection du travail), police and gendarmerie units establish the facts by report (procès-verbal), and the consequences then fall in three layers.

The first layer is administrative and financial. Article L. 8253-1 of the Code du travail provides: “Le ministre chargé de l’immigration prononce, au vu des procès-verbaux et des rapports qui lui sont transmis en application de l’ article L. 8271-17 , une amende administrative contre l’auteur d’un manquement aux articles L. 8251-1 et L. 8251-2 , sans préjudice des poursuites judiciaires pouvant être intentées à son encontre.” The immigration minister imposes an administrative fine for breach, on top of any criminal case — and the scale is severe: “Le montant de l’amende est, au plus, égal à 5 000 fois le taux horaire du minimum garanti prévu à l’ article L. 3231-12 .” Up to 5,000 times the hourly minimum garanti per foreign worker concerned, rising to 15,000 times for repeat offending. For a small company that hired one British developer without authorisation, the arithmetic alone justifies building the ANEF file properly.

The second layer is criminal. Article L. 8256-2 of the Code du travail provides: “Le fait pour toute personne, directement ou par personne interposée, d’embaucher, de conserver à son service ou d’employer pour quelque durée que ce soit un étranger non muni du titre l’autorisant à exercer une activité salariée en France, en méconnaissance de l’article L. 8251-1 , est puni d’un emprisonnement de cinq ans et d’une amende de 30 000 euros.” Five years’ imprisonment and a 30,000 euro fine, rising to ten years and 200,000 euros where the offence is committed by an organised gang (bande organisée). Knowingly using the services of an employer of an unauthorised foreign worker draws the same penalties. The Code offers one genuine shelter: the penalties do not apply to the employer who, faced with a forged document or a document fraudulently presented by the employee, declared the hire to social security, filed the single hiring declaration and verified the document with the competent authority — without intending to join the fraud and without knowing of it. That shelter is exactly why the L. 5221-8 verification letter must be requested and kept: diligence documented before the first payslip is the employer’s best exhibit.

The third layer hits the company’s social-charge relief, and a March 2025 Cour de cassation ruling closed what some employers believed was an escape hatch. In Cass. 2e civ., 20 March 2025, appeal no. 23-15.729, published in the Bulletin, an employer caught employing an unauthorised foreign worker had been subjected by URSSAF (the body collecting social contributions) to the cancellation of its contribution reductions and exemptions over several years, and argued for modulation of the penalty. The Court held: “Ainsi, l’employeur à l’égard duquel a été constatée l’infraction d’emploi d’étranger non autorisé à travailler ne peut bénéficier de cette modulation de la sanction d’annulation des réductions et exonérations de cotisations de sécurité sociale ou de contributions dues aux organismes de sécurité sociale.” No modulation for unauthorised foreign employment: the cancellation of relief stands in full, and it applies per worker. The payroll saving the company thought it had made evaporates, with interest and penalties.

The employee’s side of unlawful work is less often explained, and a November 2022 ruling states it with unusual clarity. In Cass. soc., 23 November 2022, appeal no. 21-12.125, a night watchman dismissed for lacking a residence permit claimed his wages for the suspension period. The Court recalled the statute word for word: “le salarié étranger a droit au titre de la période d’emploi illicite, au paiement du salaire et des accessoires de celui-ci, conformément aux dispositions légales, conventionnelles et aux stipulations contractuelles applicables à son emploi, déduction faite des sommes antérieurement perçues au titre de la période considérée.” The unauthorised worker is owed full wages and accessories for the whole illicit-employment period. And on the dismissal itself, the Court drew the line every British employee should memorise: the irregularity of the foreign worker’s situation “constitue nécessairement une cause objective justifiant la rupture de son contrat de travail” — it necessarily constitutes an objective ground justifying termination — but it is not in itself serious or gross misconduct (faute grave ou lourde). Consequences follow directly: the dismissal cannot be dressed up as a misconduct dismissal to deprive the worker of wages for a precautionary suspension (mise à pied conservatoire), and the employer who dismissed for “lack of residence permit” without invoking gross misconduct was ordered to pay the back wages. Unlawful does not mean rightless — but it does mean the contract ends, and any OQTF that follows is a separate fight.

Conclusion

A British citizen can absolutely be hired on a French payroll after Brexit, and thousands are each year — but the lawful sequence is rigid: employer-led work authorisation on ANEF, decided by the prefect on published criteria with salary and labour-market tests, then the visa and the salarié or temporary-worker card, then the first day of work, in that order. Skipping a step converts an ordinary hire into a three-layer liability of administrative fines, criminal exposure and cancelled social-charge relief, while the employee trades a career move for dismissal plus removal proceedings. The system does, however, offer genuine second chances: a well-evidenced gracious or hierarchical appeal within two months, then the administrative tribunal, cures most refusals that were ever curable. Build the first file as if it will be read by a judge — because one day, it may be. Check the permit, keep the prefectoral reply, pay at least the SMIC or the collective minimum, advertise the post properly, and never let anyone start before the authorisation lands.

Need a quick opinion on your case.

Starting a French job as a British citizen, or hiring one, and facing a work authorisation refusal, a dismissal for lack of permit, or an inspection report? Get a telephone consultation within 48 hours with a lawyer of the firm. Call +33 6 46 60 58 22 or write via our contact page with your contract, the ANEF decision and your residence documents.