You have done the hard part. A French employer wants to hire you, the salary has been agreed, and the start date is pencilled in. Then human resources writes back with a sentence that chills every British candidate since Brexit: we need to sort out your work permit first. Because the United Kingdom is now a third country outside the European Union, you no longer have the automatic right to take up a job in France. Your employer must obtain a French work authorisation before you can lawfully start, and you must then secure the right visa and the right residence card. Where the paperwork goes wrong, the consequences are brutal: a refused authorisation, a refused residence card, and sometimes an order to leave French territory attached to the refusal. This article explains the whole chain in order, from the employer’s application to the remedies open to you when the administration says no. Every French term is explained as it appears, every decisive rule is linked to its official text, and the two court decisions that matter most to salaried Britons are quoted word for word.

I. Your French Job Offer After Brexit: Which Work Permit and Which Residence Card Do You Need

Since 1 January 2021, British citizens are treated in France exactly like any other non-European worker. The Withdrawal Agreement protected Britons who were already resident and working in France before the end of the transition period, but a Briton who arrives now with a fresh job offer follows the ordinary third-country procedure. That procedure has two distinct stages, and confusing them is the single most common mistake. First, the employer obtains an autorisation de travail, a work authorisation, which is permission for that employer to employ that foreign worker in that post. Second, you, the worker, obtain a long-stay visa and then a carte de séjour salarié, a temporary residence card marked employee, which is your personal right to live and work in France. The authorisation belongs to the recruitment; the residence card belongs to you. One does not replace the other.

A. Does My Employer Really Need a Work Permit Before I Can Start

Yes, and the obligation falls on the employer, not on you. The rule is stated bluntly in the Labour Code: to enter France in order to take up salaried employment, a foreign worker must present a visaed employment contract or a work authorisation, since article L. 5221-2 of the Labour Code provides that “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.” The same code adds that a foreigner authorised to live in France still may not take up salaried work without first obtaining that authorisation, because article L. 5221-5 of the Labour Code provides that “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”, meaning the authorisation described in article L. 5221-2. Start work without it and you are working unlawfully, even if your visa is otherwise in order.

British readers should note exactly why they are caught by these articles. The regulations provide that any foreigner who is not a national of a European Union Member State, of another European Economic Area State or of Switzerland needs a work authorisation to take salaried employment in France, as article R. 5221-1 of the Labour Code states: “Pour exercer une activité professionnelle salariée en France, les personnes suivantes doivent détenir une autorisation de travail lorsqu’elles sont employées conformément aux dispositions du présent code : 1° Etranger non ressortissant d’un Etat membre de l’Union européenne, d’un autre Etat partie à l’Espace économique européen ou de la Confédération suisse”. Before Brexit you were exempt as a European citizen; today you sit squarely in that first category. The same article places the application duty on the employer: “La demande d’autorisation de travail est faite par l’employeur”, the work authorisation application is made by the employer. In practice your future employer files the request on the ANEF platform, the Administration Numérique pour les Étrangers en France, the Home Office digital portal through which work authorisation applications are now submitted, and the file is instructed by the DREETS, the regional directorate for employment, which is the decentralised State service that examines the merits of the application. You cannot file it yourself, and an employer who tells you to sort it out alone does not know the procedure.

The same article R. 5221-1 of the Labour Code adds a sentence that returning readers and mobile workers often miss: “Tout nouveau contrat de travail fait l’objet d’une demande d’autorisation de travail”, every new employment contract requires a fresh work authorisation application. The authorisation is therefore tied to one employer and one post. If you change employer, even for a better salary in the same town, your new employer must apply again. If you hold two part-time jobs, each post needs its own cover. This single-contract logic explains many refusals: candidates assume that a valid residence card with a right to work covers any job, and discover too late that the new contract was never authorised.

Whether the authorisation is granted depends on five cumulative conditions set out in article R. 5221-20 of the Labour Code. First, the employment situation test: either the post appears on the official shortage-occupation list, the liste des métiers en tension, the annually updated list of occupations and geographical areas with proven recruitment difficulties, or the vacancy must have been advertised for three weeks with the public employment service without producing a suitable candidate. Second, the employer must be in good standing: up to date with social obligations and free of convictions or administrative sanctions for illegal work, health and safety breaches, assistance with irregular entry or stay, or irregular posting of workers. Third, employer and employee must satisfy the regulatory conditions for practising the activity where the activity is regulated, which matters for nurses, electricians, security guards and similar licensed trades. Fourth, the pay offered must at least equal the SMIC, the statutory national minimum wage, or the minimum set by the applicable collective agreement. Fifth, for seasonal posts, the applicant must prove decent accommodation for the whole stay. Where the employer is a young company, a household employer or a business with past labour-inspection difficulties, the second condition deserves particular attention, because the file is examined strictly.

The shortage-occupation list deserves a paragraph of its own, because it transforms your chances. The foreigners code provides that the state of the employment market may be held against the applicant except where the code provides otherwise, notably where the application concerns an occupation and area with recruitment difficulties, since article L. 414-13 of the foreigners code states: “la situation du marché de l’emploi est opposable au demandeur sauf lorsque le présent code en dispose autrement, et notamment lorsque la demande de l’étranger concerne un métier et une zone géographique caractérisée par des difficultés de recrutement.” The list of those occupations and areas is drawn up and refreshed at least once a year by the administration after consulting representative employer and employee organisations. If your post, in your region, sits on that list, the employment-situation objection falls away and the file becomes materially easier. Before accepting an offer, ask your employer to check the current list for the exact job title and the region of the workplace; a post that is shortage-listed in Provence may not be shortage-listed in Paris, and the distinction decides the outcome.

Employers face a mirror obligation with teeth. The Labour Code requires every employer to check with the competent administrations that the foreign worker holds a document authorising salaried work in France, because article L. 5221-8 of the Labour Code 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”, subject only to an exception for foreigners registered as jobseekers. Behind that verification duty sits a prohibition drafted in absolute terms: article L. 8251-1 of the Labour Code provides that “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, directly or indirectly, for any duration, a foreigner without the document authorising salaried work. An employer who keeps you on after your documents lapse commits an offence of illegal employment, travail illégal, the umbrella term for undeclared work and employment of unauthorised foreigners, and that exposure explains why French employers suspend or dismiss workers whose papers expire, sometimes faster than the worker expects.

B. Which Residence Card Will I Receive: Salarié, Travailleur Temporaire or Passeport Talent

Once the work authorisation is granted, the second stage begins, and it belongs to you. As a rule, any foreigner over eighteen who wishes to stay in France for more than three months must hold a stay document, since article L. 411-1 of the foreigners code lists the qualifying documents: long-stay visa, temporary residence card, multi-year residence card, resident card, long-term EU resident card, retired-person card or temporary stay authorisation. For a first arrival with a job offer, the route is normally a long-stay visa equivalent to a residence card, applied for at the French consulate covering your British address, followed after arrival by the residence card itself. The first issue of a temporary or multi-year card is conditional on producing that long-stay visa, because article L. 412-1 of the foreigners code provides: “la première délivrance d’une carte de séjour temporaire ou d’une carte de séjour pluriannuelle est subordonnée à la production par l’étranger du visa de long séjour mentionné aux 1° ou 2° de l’article L. 411-1.” Do not attempt to enter on a ninety-day visa-free short stay and convert it at the préfecture, the local State authority office that issues residence documents; apart from narrow exceptions, the file will be declared inadmissible and months will be lost.

The standard card for a British hire on a permanent contract is the temporary card marked salarié, employee. The foreigners code provides that a foreigner working under a contract of indefinite duration receives a temporary residence card marked salarié valid for a maximum of one year, and that its issue requires prior possession of a work authorisation, since article L. 421-1 of the foreigners code states: “L’étranger qui exerce une activité salariée sous contrat de travail à durée indéterminée se voit délivrer une carte de séjour temporaire”, a temporary residence card marked salarié valid for a maximum of one year. The same article adds: “La délivrance de cette carte de séjour est subordonnée à la détention préalable d’une autorisation de travail”, so the card cannot issue without the prior work authorisation. CDI means contrat à durée indéterminée, a permanent employment contract with no end date, as opposed to a CDD, contrat à durée déterminée, a fixed-term contract. If you are hired on a fixed-term contract or a secondment of limited duration, the matching card is generally the carte de séjour travailleur temporaire, the temporary-worker card, which covers assignments with a defined end. Highly qualified hires and certain investors may qualify instead for the carte de séjour passeport talent, the talent-passport multi-year card, a four-year card with its own salary and qualification thresholds; where your salary comfortably exceeds the threshold and your role involves research, artistic creation, a corporate mandate or an innovative project, ask your employer whether the talent route would spare you annual renewals. The choice of card is not cosmetic: it fixes the duration, the renewal rhythm and, as section II explains, your protection if the job ends.

Renewal is where salaried Britons most often come unstuck, so the mechanics deserve precision. Applications are now filed online through the ANEF portal, and the golden rule is to file early: the administration expects renewal applications in the final two months before expiry, and late filing can cost you the bridging protection described below. Keep every payslip, every employment certificate, the current contract and proof of address in one file from day one, because the préfecture will ask for evidence of genuine continuing employment. If your contract type changes at renewal, from a fixed-term contract to a permanent contract for example, say so expressly and attach the new contract; the card mention can be adjusted, and silence creates inconsistencies the caseworker will hold against you. Where you already hold a one-year salarié card and still meet the conditions, the foreigners code opens the path to a multi-year card, since article L. 421-2 of the foreigners code provides that a foreigner seeking a multi-year salarié card who already holds a card issued for another reason receives a one-year temporary card with the requested mention where the conditions are met, and at expiry, continuing to meet them, receives the multi-year card on request. Progression from one-year to multi-year status is therefore the normal horizon of a stable hire, provided each step is documented.

British government guidance confirms the overall picture from the London side: the official Travel to France for work guidance and the Living in France guide remind UK nationals that a work permit and the correct long-stay visa are now required before starting employment in France, with distinct routes for short assignments, intra-group transfers and long-term hires. Read those pages alongside the French official texts rather than instead of them: London explains the principle, but only the French articles cited here state the exact conditions the préfecture will apply to your file.

II. When the Administration Says No: Refusals, Job Loss and How to Challenge

A refusal never arrives alone. The work authorisation refusal stops the recruitment; the residence-card refusal or non-renewal can be accompanied by an order to leave France; and an expired document can cost you the job itself, because your employer is legally obliged to part with workers who have lost the right to work. This second part maps the three danger points in sequence: the refusal of the authorisation or the card, the two-month window for challenging it, and the fate of your right to stay if the employment itself ends. The good news is that French administrative law gives you structured remedies at each point, provided you act within the deadlines and keep the written evidence.

A. My Work Permit or Residence Card Was Refused: How Do I Challenge Within Two Months

Start by reading the refusal letter the way a lawyer reads it, because its wording dictates your remedy. A work authorisation refusal must state its legal basis: most commonly the employment situation, meaning the administration considers that the post could have gone to a candidate already on the French labour market; the employer’s non-compliance, such as contribution arrears or past illegal-work sanctions; or an unsuitable salary or unlicensed activity. A residence-card refusal typically invokes missing documents, doubts about genuine employment, or a previous irregular stay. Check three things immediately: the date of notification, which starts the clock; whether the decision is express, a reasoned written refusal, or implicit, a silence kept for two months on a complete file, which counts as a refusal; and whether an obligation to leave French territory is attached. That attachment is an OQTF, an obligation de quitter le territoire français, an administrative order requiring you to leave France within, usually, thirty days, or without delay where the decision says so. The foreigners code expressly allows such an order where a residence document has been refused, withdrawn or not renewed, since article L. 611-1 of the foreigners code lists among its cases: “L’étranger s’est vu refuser la délivrance d’un titre de séjour, le renouvellement du titre de séjour, du document provisoire délivré à l’occasion d’une demande de titre de séjour ou de l’autorisation provisoire de séjour qui lui avait été délivré ou s’est vu retirer un de ces documents”. A refusal plus an OQTF therefore forms a single litigation package, and both must be challenged together.

The contentious remedy, the recours contentieux, the court action asking the administrative judge to annul the decision, belongs to the tribunal administratif, the first-instance administrative court for the département of your address. The deadline is strict and short: the court can only be seised by an action against a decision, within two months of notification or publication of the contested decision, because article R. 421-1 of the Code of Administrative Justice provides: “La juridiction ne peut être saisie que par voie de recours formé contre une décision, et ce, dans les deux mois à partir de la notification ou de la publication de la décision attaquée.” Two months means two calendar months from the date you received the letter, and the court applies it without mercy: a case filed on day sixty-one is inadmissible, however strong the merits. Alongside or before the court action, you may file a recours gracieux, a free-form request asking the authority that decided to reconsider, addressed to the préfet, the State representative in the département, or a recours hiérarchique, the same request addressed to the Minister of the Interior. These amicable remedies cost nothing and sometimes resolve clear errors, such as a payslip the caseworker overlooked, but they do not suspend the OQTF on their own. Where removal is imminent, your lawyer will combine the annulment action with a référé-suspension, the emergency application asking the judge to freeze the decision within days on the ground of serious doubt about its legality and urgency. The practical sequence for a Briton with a genuine job is therefore: preserve the envelope and the notification date, file the amicable request within days with the missing or corrected evidence, and lodge the tribunal action well inside the two months, with the emergency application where an OQTF sets a departure deadline.

On the merits, the arguments that win are concrete, not rhetorical. Against an employment-situation refusal, produce the three-week advertisement record, the Pôle emploi certificates showing no suitable candidate, and, where available, the shortage-list extract proving the post and area are officially hard to recruit for. Against an employer-compliance refusal, produce contribution clearance certificates, the collective-agreement pay scale showing the salary meets the minimum, and the professional licence where the trade is regulated. Against a genuine-employment doubt, produce the signed contract, the employer’s registration documents, recent payslips and bank statements showing salary payment, and, where the préfecture questions the company’s reality, its commercial lease, client invoices or URSSAF declarations. In every case, add evidence of your integration: French-language efforts, family presence, length of stay, tax notices. Judges deciding salarié cases weigh the reality and nature of the work above all, and a thick, ordered file beats a long, indignant letter every time.

Two court decisions, both from the Social Chamber of the Court of Cassation, the Cour de cassation, France’s supreme court for employment disputes, show how strictly judges enforce the documents rule, and both should be read by any Briton combining work with residence. In the first, an employee dismissed after his papers expired argued that his dismissal was unfair; the Court of Cassation quashed the appeal judgment that had agreed with him, holding that renewal protection only covers workers who apply in time. The court’s own words deserve quotation in full: “un étranger, titulaire d’une carte de résident, doit, pour bénéficier du délai de trois mois lui permettant, après expiration de son titre, de conserver son droit d’exercer une activité professionnelle, en solliciter le renouvellement dans les deux mois précédant cette expiration.” That is Court of Cassation, Social Chamber, 29 November 2023, appeal no. 22-10.004, published in the Bulletin. The lesson for salarié-card holders is direct: the three-month grace period after expiry, during which you keep the right to work while the renewal is examined, exists only if you filed the renewal inside the two months before expiry. File late and your employer is entitled, indeed obliged, to treat you as unauthorised.

The second decision concerns workers employed without proper papers when a contract is transferred. A catering employee without a work residence document argued that the incoming service provider had to take over his contract; the Court of Cassation rejected the claim, holding in terms that must be quoted exactly: “un étranger non muni du titre l’autorisant à exercer une activité salariée en France n’est pas assimilé à un salarié régulièrement engagé au regard des règles régissant le transfert du contrat de travail”. That is Court of Cassation, Social Chamber, 17 April 2019, appeal no. 18-15.321. For a Briton this means that periods worked without the correct document create no transferable employment rights against a new employer, and more broadly that undocumented work history cannot be converted afterwards into seniority, transfer rights or unfair-dismissal protection. Keep every period of work covered by a valid document, without gaps, from the first day.

B. I Lost My Job or Changed Employer: Do I Lose My Right to Stay

The honest answer is that it depends on the card you hold and on how the job ended, and the differences are large enough to plan around. Begin with the strongest protection, the one written into the salarié card itself. The foreigners code provides that where the salarié cardholder becomes involuntarily unemployed, the card is extended by one year by derogation from the ordinary rules, and at the next renewal, if still unemployed, the stay decision follows the remaining unemployment- benefit entitlement, because article L. 421-1 of the foreigners code continues: “elle est prolongée d’un an si l’étranger se trouve involontairement privé d’emploi”, so the card is extended by one year where the holder becomes involuntarily unemployed. It adds: “Lors du renouvellement suivant, s’il est toujours privé d’emploi, il est statué sur son droit au séjour pour une durée équivalente à celle des droits qu’il a acquis à l’allocation d’assurance”, so the next renewal follows the remaining unemployment-benefit entitlement. Involuntarily deprived of employment means a dismissal other than for serious personal fault, a redundancy, or the expiry of a fixed-term contract that is not renewed: register promptly with France Travail, the public employment operator formerly called Pôle emploi, keep the registration certificates, and present them at renewal. A resignation without a recognised legitimate reason, by contrast, may be treated as voluntary unemployment and will not open the same protection, so take advice before resigning from a French post while your stay depends on it.

Changing employer voluntarily follows the logic of section I: each new contract needs its own authorisation, and the residence card must match the new reality. In practice the new employer files a fresh work authorisation application citing the new post, and you apply to update or renew the card with the new contract attached. Do not resign the old post before the new authorisation is granted unless you hold a card that already authorises any salaried work independently, such as a resident card or a card issued on another ground with full work rights. The gap between two authorisations is the danger zone: payslips stop, the file shows unemployment, and a renewal examined in that window may produce a refusal with an OQTF. Wherever possible, sequence the move so that the new authorisation is granted while the old contract still runs, and keep written proof of every date.

Dismissal for loss of the right to work follows its own employment-law track, and the 2023 decision quoted above governs it. Because the employer must verify your documents and may not keep an unauthorised worker in service, an employer who discovers that your card has expired without a timely renewal application will typically send a formal demand for fresh papers, then notify dismissal for loss of the right to work. That dismissal is not treated as an ordinary unfair dismissal where you failed to apply in time, as the quashing of the Dijon appeal judgment demonstrates. Conversely, where you did apply in time and hold the renewal receipt, the récépissé, the official receipt issued while a renewal is examined, you keep the right to work during the examination period and a dismissal pronounced in that window can be challenged before the employment tribunal, the conseil de prud’hommes, the labour court that hears dismissal disputes. The practical discipline is therefore simple: diary the expiry date twelve months ahead, file the renewal in the two-month window, keep the receipt on your person and send a copy to human resources the same day.

Finally, remember that a job loss never obliges you to leave silently. A refusal to renew a salarié card after involuntary unemployment, or a withdrawal following a change of employer, can be challenged through the same two-month tribunal route described above, with the same possibility of emergency suspension where an OQTF is attached. Attach the France Travail history, the benefit statements, the dismissal letter showing the involuntary character of the unemployment, and the new employer’s offer where one exists. Judges in these cases look for continuity of genuine professional activity and good-faith compliance with the renewal formalities; a worker who applied on time, registered as a jobseeker and accepted suitable offers presents exactly the profile the statute was written to protect.

Conclusion

A French job offer is, for a Briton after Brexit, the beginning of a two-stage administrative journey rather than a single signature. Your employer secures the work authorisation by proving the post, the salary and its own compliance; you then secure the long-stay visa and the salarié or temporary-worker card that make your stay lawful. The shortage-occupation list can remove the hardest obstacle where your trade and region qualify, and steady progression from a one-year card to a multi-year card rewards workers who keep their files complete. When the answer is negative, the system gives you sixty days to challenge the refusal before the administrative court, with amicable reconsideration and emergency suspension where removal threatens. And when employment itself ends, involuntary unemployment extends the salarié card rather than cancelling it, provided the renewal formalities were honoured on time. Treat every deadline as absolute, keep every document, and never let a gap open between two authorisations: that discipline, more than any argument, is what keeps a British career in France lawful from the first payslip to the last.

Need a quick opinion on your case

A French job offer, a work authorisation refusal or a salarié card renewal raises questions that turn on your exact contract, salary and deadlines. Our firm offers a telephone consultation within 48 hours with a lawyer of the chambers, so that your file is reviewed before any two-month challenge period expires. Call +33 6 46 60 58 22 to arrange it, or write through our contact page. We receive clients in Paris and across the Île-de-France, and we act for British nationals throughout France.