Losing your job in a foreign country is frightening. The dismissal letter (lettre de licenciement, the formal letter by which a French employer notifies you that your employment contract is ended) arrives in French, it cites articles of the Code du travail (the French Labour Code, the statute that governs every employment contract performed in France), and it gives you a date for a meeting you barely understand. As a British employee in France after Brexit, you may wonder whether the same rules protect you as your French colleagues, whether your Withdrawal Agreement residence permit (titre de séjour accord Royaume-Uni, the post-Brexit residence card issued to Britons protected by the EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement) lets you stay and claim unemployment benefit, and what you can do if the dismissal is unfair. This guide answers those questions in plain English, with the exact French legal references your case will turn on.

French dismissal law is formal and strict. An employer cannot simply tell you that you are sacked with immediate effect and walk you to the door, as sometimes happens in England. Every dismissal for personal reasons (licenciement pour motif personnel, a dismissal linked to you as a person — your conduct, your performance, your fitness for the job — as opposed to an economic redundancy) must rest on a genuine and serious cause (cause réelle et sérieuse, the legal standard meaning the reason must be real, provable and grave enough to justify ending the contract), follow a mandatory step-by-step procedure, and be notified in a reasoned registered letter. If any step is missed, the dismissal can be declared without genuine and serious cause (sans cause réelle et sérieuse, the judicial finding that the employer’s reason fails the legal test) or even void (nul, meaning the dismissal is treated as legally non-existent, with stronger compensation), and the labour court (conseil de prud’hommes, the French employment tribunal that hears disputes between employers and employees) can order the employer to pay you compensation. There is a strict twelve-month deadline to act, so reading this guide this week — not next month — genuinely matters.

This article covers employees on open-ended contracts (contrats à durée indéterminée, universally shortened to CDI, the standard permanent French contract with full dismissal protection). Fixed-term and agency rules differ and are not covered here. Throughout, every French term is explained when it first appears, and every decisive legal proposition is anchored to the official text on Légifrance or to a published judgment of the Cour de cassation (the French supreme court for private and employment law, whose rulings bind lower courts on points of law).

I. I have just been sacked in France — is my dismissal letter valid and what notice and severance am I owed?

A. I have just been sacked — is my dismissal letter valid, was the meeting lawful, and can I still be dismissed on the spot?

No dismissal for personal reasons in France is valid without a preliminary meeting (entretien préalable, a face-to-face meeting that must take place before the employer is allowed to decide anything). The employer must first invite you to this meeting by registered letter or by a letter handed to you personally against a signed receipt. The statute is worded without any ambiguity: Article L1232-2 of the Labour Code provides that “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.” In ordinary English, the meeting cannot take place until at least five full working days after you were presented with the invitation. Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays do not count as working days (jours ouvrables, meaning Monday to Saturday in French labour law computation, excluding Sundays and public holidays). If you received the invitation on a Tuesday, the earliest lawful meeting date is the following Tuesday. You may bring a companion — either a colleague employed by the same company or, in companies without staff representatives, an outside staff adviser (conseiller du salarié, a volunteer listed by the local prefecture who assists employees in small firms) — and the employer must tell you of that right in the invitation letter.

The Cour de cassation polices this five-day period with arithmetical rigour, and its rulings cut both ways. In a judgment of 6 September 2023, pourvoi No E 22-11.661 (Arrêt n° 826 F-B of 6 September 2023), the supreme court recalled that “Selon ce texte, l’entretien préalable ne peut avoir lieu moins de cinq jours ouvrables après la présentation de la lettre recommandée ou de la remise en main propre de la lettre de convocation.” The appeal court had found the period breached because the employee collected the registered letter from the post office on 22 January for a meeting fixed on 24 January. The Cour de cassation quashed that reasoning: the clock had started running the day after the postman’s first presentation of the letter, on 13 January, so that by 24 January the employee had enjoyed five full working days after all. The lesson for you is practical rather than academic. Keep the envelope, the collection slip (avis de passage, the notice the postman leaves when you are absent) and the invitation letter itself, because the validity of your whole dismissal may turn on the date printed on them. If the meeting genuinely took place too early, the procedure is irregular (irrégulier, meaning flawed in form), which opens a right to compensation even where the underlying reason for dismissal is sound.

After the meeting, the employer must wait, reflect, and then notify the dismissal — if dismissal is still the decision — by registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt. Article L1232-6 of the Labour Code states that “Lorsque l’employeur décide de licencier un salarié, il lui notifie sa décision par lettre recommandée avec avis de réception.” The same article adds two decisive requirements: “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.” In plain terms, the letter must spell out the precise reasons for your dismissal, and it cannot be posted until at least two full working days after the meeting date. A letter that says only “loss of confidence” or “reorganisation” without concrete facts is vulnerable. The statement of reasons in that letter fixes the boundaries of the dispute: as a rule, a reason the employer forgot to mention cannot be added later before the court. Ask a French-speaking adviser to translate the letter line by line on the day you receive it, and check three things immediately — the date of posting against the meeting date, the exact facts alleged against you, and whether the letter is signed by someone with authority to dismiss.

A word about being dismissed “on the spot”. Summary dismissal without notice exists in France only for serious misconduct (faute grave, wilful or gross misconduct that makes it impossible to keep you even during a notice period — for example theft, violence, or a deliberate refusal to work) or wilful misconduct (faute lourde, even graver, involving an intention to harm the employer). Your employer still has to run the invitation, the meeting and the reasoned letter; only the notice period and, for faute grave, the statutory severance pay disappear. The burden of proving the alleged misconduct lies entirely on the employer, and judges examine the evidence file by file. Shouting matches, a single absence, or a disputed performance claim rarely qualify. If your letter invokes faute grave but describes ordinary performance issues, that characterisation is worth challenging, because downgrading the classification restores both your notice pay and your severance.

Two British-specific points complete the picture at this stage. First, the dismissal letter will be in French, and nothing in the Labour Code obliges the employer to provide an English translation. That is lawful, but it does not weaken your rights: the time limits run from the French notification, so get the translation done at once rather than waiting. Second, your immigration position as a Briton is separate from your employment contract. If you hold a Withdrawal Agreement residence permit, losing your job does not cancel your right of residence, and you do not need a new work authorisation to take a new job — the permit itself carries the right to work. Keep your permit, your employment contract, your last three payslips (bulletins de paie, the monthly statements every French employer must issue) and the dismissal letter together in one file from day one; every adviser, administration and court you meet will ask for the same four documents.

B. How much money should I actually receive — notice, severance, holiday pay and the final settlement?

Whatever the reason for dismissal, the employer must pay you everything you have earned plus the statutory end-of-contract payments, and must hand you three closing documents. The final settlement statement (solde de tout compte, the itemised receipt listing every sum paid on departure), the employment certificate (attestation France Travail, formerly attestation Pôle emploi, the form the employer sends to the unemployment service so you can register as a jobseeker) and the work certificate (certificat de travail, stating your dates of employment and job title) must be given to you when the contract ends. Refusal or delay is itself actionable. Check each figure below against your own paperwork before signing anything marked as final.

First, the notice period (préavis, the period during which the contract continues after notification — you either work it and are paid normally, or the employer releases you from performing it but must still pay it). Its length is fixed by your sector agreement (convention collective, the industry-wide bargain that sets notice, minima and many other terms for your trade) or, failing that, by local custom and your length of service — commonly one to three months for supervisory and managerial staff (cadres, the French category of executives and managers). If you do not work the notice, through no fault of your own, Article L1234-5 of the Labour Code preserves your pay in full: “L’inexécution du préavis, notamment en cas de dispense par l’employeur, n’entraîne aucune diminution des salaires et avantages que le salarié aurait perçus s’il avait accompli son travail jusqu’à l’expiration du préavis, indemnité de congés payés comprise.” Only a dismissal for serious or wilful misconduct extinguishes this payment. British employees are sometimes told that, Brexit having “changed the rules”, no notice is due to foreigners. That is false. Notice rights depend on your contract and your sector agreement, never on your passport.

Secondly, statutory severance pay (indemnité légale de licenciement, the minimum lump sum owed on dismissal). Article L1234-9 of the Labour Code grants it to any employee on an open-ended contract “licencié alors qu’il compte 8 mois d’ancienneté ininterrompus au service du même employeur”, except in cases of serious misconduct. The rate is set by Article R1234-2 of the Labour Code: “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.” Take a concrete example at round figures. With six years of service and a gross monthly reference salary of 3,500 euros, the legal minimum is 6 × 0.25 × 3,500 = 5,250 euros. With twelve years, it is (10 × 0.25 × 3,500) + (2 × 0.333 × 3,500) = 8,750 + 2,333 = 11,083 euros. Your sector agreement or your individual contract very often provides a higher, contractual severance (indemnité conventionnelle, the enhanced rate negotiated for your industry), and the employer must pay whichever is higher. The reference salary itself is the most favourable of your average earnings over the last twelve or the last three months, including bonuses pro rata. Recompute it yourself; payroll errors on this line are frequent, particularly where variable pay and overtime are concerned.

Thirdly, accrued paid holiday (congés payés, the minimum five weeks per year every employee accrues in France). Any holiday you earned but could not take before the contract ended must be paid as a holiday indemnity. Article L3141-28 of the Labour Code provides: “Lorsque le contrat de travail est rompu avant que le salarié ait pu bénéficier de la totalité du congé auquel il avait droit, il reçoit, pour la fraction de congé dont il n’a pas bénéficié, une indemnité compensatrice de congé déterminée d’après les articles L. 3141-24 à L. 3141-27” Roughly one month of work earns two and a half days of holiday, so an employee dismissed mid-year with no holiday taken can be owed several weeks of salary on this head alone. Add any pro rata annual bonus (prime annuelle, such as a thirteenth month), overtime arrears, and reimbursement of professional expenses. The total settlement for a mid-career employee with several years of service routinely reaches four to six figures, which is why accepting the first figure offered, in a second language, without verification, is the costliest mistake a dismissed British employee can make.

Finally, unemployment benefit (allocation d’aide au retour à l’emploi, universally called ARE, the monthly allowance paid by France Travail, the French public employment service, to involuntarily unemployed workers who have contributed long enough). As a British holder of a Withdrawal Agreement permit, or of any residence card authorising work, you register with France Travail exactly like a French national once the employer has issued the attestation. The benefit is calculated from your former salary, subject to a ceiling, and paid monthly while you look for work and fulfil the active job-search duties. Dismissal for personal reasons, even for misconduct short of wilful misconduct, opens the right to ARE; only a purely voluntary resignation (démission, quitting on your own initiative) normally blocks it. If the employer delays the attestation, register anyway with the dismissal letter and your last payslips, and keep proof of every step: late registration can cost you weeks of allowance. One practical warning for cross-Channel lives: if you plan to return to the United Kingdom and export your French unemployment rights under the EU-UK coordination rules, take advice before you move, because export requires prior registration and a specific portable document, and the window is short.

II. My dismissal feels unfair — how do I challenge it as a British employee and what can the court award?

A. How do I take my employer to the labour court — deadlines, conciliation, evidence and language?

Every dismissal for personal reasons must be justified by a genuine and serious cause. Article L1232-1 of the Labour Code states the rule in a single sentence: “Tout licenciement pour motif personnel est motivé dans les conditions définies par le présent chapitre. Il est justifié par une cause réelle et sérieuse.” Real means the facts exist and are objectively verifiable rather than invented or exaggerated; serious means they are grave enough to make continuing the employment relationship impossible. Insufficient performance can qualify, but only if the employer proves precise, repeated, documented shortcomings attributable to you — not a vague “poor fit”, not a single bad quarter, and not objectives that were never communicated or were manifestly unattainable. The employer bears the burden of proof on the facts stated in the dismissal letter, and any doubt benefits you. Before litigating, reread your letter with a cold eye and ask two questions: are the facts true, and even if true, do they really make dismissal the only answer? If the answer to either is no, a challenge is worth a lawyer’s assessment.

The court with jurisdiction is the conseil de prud’hommes of the place where you worked, where the company is registered, or where you were engaged — you choose the most convenient. Article L1411-1 of the Labour Code defines its mission: “Le conseil de prud’hommes règle par voie de conciliation les différends qui peuvent s’élever à l’occasion de tout contrat de travail soumis aux dispositions du présent code entre les employeurs, ou leurs représentants, et les salariés qu’ils emploient. Il juge les litiges lorsque la conciliation n’a pas abouti.” Proceedings therefore begin with a conciliation hearing (audience de conciliation, a preliminary session where two judges try to broker a settlement) before any full trial hearing. Many cases settle there, often for a negotiated lump sum recorded in a binding minute. If conciliation fails, the case proceeds to a judgment hearing, with exchange of written submissions and exhibits. Proceedings are free of court fees, representation by a lawyer is not compulsory but is strongly advisable where the other side is represented, and hearings take place in French. As a non-French speaker you may be accompanied by an interpreter; tell the court registry (greffe, the court’s administrative office) in advance that you need one, and bring translated copies of your key exhibits. For readers in the capital’s region, the Paris labour court sits at 27 rue Louis Blanc in the 10th arrondissement and hears the largest English-speaking caseload in the country, but the procedure is identical before every court in France, including throughout Île-de-France.

The deadline is the harshest feature of the system and the one British claimants most often miss. Article L1471-1 of the Labour Code provides: “Toute action portant sur la rupture du contrat de travail se prescrit par douze mois à compter de la notification de la rupture.” Twelve months from notification of the breach — that is, from the date the dismissal letter was first presented to you — to file your claim, not twelve months to think about it. Miss that anniversary and the claim is time-barred (prescrit, meaning extinguished, whatever its merits), with only narrow exceptions for concealed facts. The practical consequence is a timetable measured in weeks. In month one, have the letter translated, compute your notice, severance and holiday figures, and consult an employment lawyer. In months two to four, send a formal demand letter (mise en demeure, the recorded-delivery letter setting out what you claim and why) and attempt a negotiated settlement — employers often pay to avoid litigation. If no settlement emerges, file with the labour court well before month twelve, allowing time for drafting, translation of exhibits and the mandatory pre-filing steps. Government guidance on dismissal disputes and on bringing a claim is published in English on the service-public.fr English pages, and the Ministry of Labour describes the dismissal procedure step by step on travail-emploi.gouv.fr; use those pages to cross-check your lawyer’s timetable, not as a substitute for advice.

Evidence wins these cases, and French courts accept a broad range of it. Your file should contain the employment contract and any amendments, the invitation to the preliminary meeting with its envelope and proof of presentation date, the minutes of the meeting if any were drawn up, the dismissal letter with its envelope, the final settlement papers and all payslips, the sector agreement extracts fixing notice and severance, performance reviews, objectives letters and warnings, relevant emails and messages (lawfully obtained — secretly recorded private conversations and hacked mailboxes are routinely thrown out), medical certificates if health is in issue, and the names of witnesses willing to attest in writing (attestation de témoin, a signed statement in a statutory form with a copy of the witness’s identity document). Organise exhibits chronologically, number them, and have the decisive ones — the invitation, the letter, the reviews that contradict the alleged shortcomings — professionally translated. Judges read files before they listen to speeches; a tidy, dated, translated bundle signals a serious claim and materially improves settlement prospects.

B. What happens if I win — reinstatement, the Macron compensation scale, void dismissals and the cost of going to court?

If the court finds your dismissal lacks a genuine and serious cause, it may first propose that you return to the company on your previous terms. Article L1235-3 of the Labour Code opens with exactly that mechanism: “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.” In practice, reinstatement is rare — it requires both sides to agree — so the court instead orders the employer to pay you a compensatory indemnity within a statutory scale (barème Macron, the binding minimum-maximum table introduced in 2017 that fixes compensation by seniority and company size). For example, an employee with five full years of service in a company of at least eleven employees falls in a bracket of three months’ salary minimum and eighteen months’ maximum; with less than one year’s service the scale runs from nothing to one or two months depending on company size. The judge sets the figure inside the bracket according to your age, salary, length of service, difficulty finding equivalent work, and training record. Ask your lawyer to compute your bracket before any negotiation: it is the anchor of every settlement discussion in France.

British claimants sometimes ask whether this scale, with its ceiling, is even lawful under international treaties — and the answer is now settled at the highest level. In its judgment of 9 April 2025, pourvoi No T 24-13.958 (Arrêt n° 373 F-D of 9 April 2025), the Cour de cassation held: “Ces dispositions et celles des articles L. 1235-3-1 et L. 1235-4 du code du travail, qui permettent raisonnablement l’indemnisation de la perte injustifiée de l’emploi et assurent le caractère dissuasif des sommes mises à la charge de l’employeur, sont de nature à permettre le versement d’une indemnité adéquate ou une réparation considérée comme appropriée au sens de l’article 10 de la Convention n° 158 de l’Organisation internationale du travail (OIT).” It concluded: “Il en résulte que les dispositions de l’article L. 1235-3 du code du travail sont compatibles avec les stipulations de l’article 10 de la Convention précitée.” Litigating on the bare argument that the ceiling should simply be ignored will therefore fail. The productive arguments are elsewhere: pushing your award towards the top of your bracket with evidence of real harm, adding heads of loss the scale does not cap (unpaid wages, overtime, bonuses, holiday indemnity, procedural damages), and, where the facts support it, pleading nullity, which escapes the scale altogether.

Nullity (nullité, the sanction reserved for dismissals that breach a fundamental freedom, equality rules or protection against harassment and discrimination) is the high-value route where the facts fit. Article L1235-3-1 of the Labour Code provides that where the court finds such a nullity and you do not seek (or cannot obtain) reinstatement, “le juge lui octroie une indemnité, à la charge de l’employeur, qui ne peut être inférieure aux salaires des six derniers mois.” Six months’ salary minimum, with no maximum — the court awards whatever your loss justifies. The classic triggers include dismissal for a discriminatory ground (pregnancy, health, union activity, nationality), dismissal in breach of maternity or workplace-accident protection, and dismissal linked to moral or sexual harassment (harcèlement moral ou sexuel, repeated conduct degrading working conditions or dignity). On harassment-linked dismissal, the Cour de cassation demands precision. In its judgment of 6 May 2025, pourvoi No C 23-22.588 (Arrêt n° 452 F-D of 6 May 2025), it recalled that “aucun salarié ne peut être sanctionné, licencié ou faire l’objet d’une mesure discriminatoire, directe ou indirecte, notamment en matière de rémunération, de formation, de reclassement, d’affectation, de qualification, de classification, de promotion professionnelle, de mutation ou de renouvellement de contrat, pour avoir subi ou refusé de subir des agissements répétés de harcèlement moral ou pour avoir témoigné de tels agissements ou les avoir relatés”, and that “toute rupture de contrat de travail intervenue en méconnaissance des articles L. 1152-1 et L. 1152-2 du code du travail, toute disposition ou tout acte contraire est nul.” But it quashed the appeal court’s nullity finding because the dismissal letter itself mentioned no complaint of harassment and the court had never established that the employee was dismissed for having suffered or refused such conduct. The message for your case is clear: if you rely on nullity, the link between the protected fact and the dismissal decision must be pleaded and proved document by document, not merely asserted alongside it.

A final practical layer: procedure, costs and the British cross-border dimension. Procedural flaws alone — a late invitation, an early meeting, a letter posted too soon or reasons stated too vaguely — give rise to a specific indemnity even when the dismissal itself was justified, capped at one month’s salary. Legal costs follow no automatic loser-pays rule on the English scale, but the court routinely orders the losing employer to pay a contribution to your legal fees (indemnité de l’article 700 du code de procédure civile, the discretionary costs award in civil litigation) of one to several thousand euros. Trade-union advice is free, legal aid (aide juridictionnelle, means-tested state funding of litigation) is available to residents regardless of nationality, and many household insurance policies include employment-dispute cover — check yours. On the British side, keep HM Revenue and Customs and the French tax office consistent about your residence position for the year of departure if you leave France, because a severance-heavy final year followed by a return to Britain is exactly the profile that triggers dual residence enquiries; the France-United Kingdom double tax treaty of 19 June 2008 allocates employment and termination income between the two States article by article, and the treaty text on gov.uk alongside the impots.gouv.fr guidance should be reconciled before you file either return. Above all, diarise the twelve-month filing deadline the day the dismissal letter arrives: every strong British claim this firm has seen won on preparation started in week one; every lost one started in month thirteen.

Conclusion

A dismissal in France is a procedure before it is a decision. The invitation, the five-day wait, the meeting, the two-day wait and the reasoned registered letter are not courtesies — they are conditions of validity, and each has tripped up real employers before real judges. Your money rights then follow mechanically: notice worked or paid, statutory or contractual severance computed on the most favourable salary average, holiday and bonus balances cleared, closing documents delivered, and unemployment benefit opened with France Travail on the strength of your residence permit. If the reason given is hollow, exaggerated or discriminatory, the labour court offers conciliation first and judgment second, with compensation inside the statutory scale for ordinary unfair dismissal and at least six months’ salary, uncapped, where nullity is proved. None of this depends on holding a French passport; it depends on holding a French employment contract and acting within twelve months. Get the dismissal letter translated this week, preserve every envelope and payslip, compute your bracket, and take advice while settlement is still possible. The employers who pay fairly are usually those who discover, early, that the employee in front of them understands the procedure better than they do.

Related reading on this site: our companion guide Dismissed by Your French Employer After Brexit? How a British Employee Tests the Procedure, Collects the Money and Challenges an Unfair Dismissal walks through the same dismissal procedure from the employer-notification angle, and remains the hub reference for this topic.

Need a quick opinion on your case?

If you have just received a dismissal letter, an invitation to a preliminary meeting, or a settlement offer you are being pressed to sign, speak to us before you sign anything. Our firm offers a telephone consultation within 48 hours with a lawyer of the firm. Call +33 6 46 60 58 22 or contact us via our contact page. We receive British clients in Paris and throughout Île-de-France, in English, and act before every labour court in France.