Your first hire in France is not working out, and you run the company from London, New York, Dubai or Singapore. The employment contract is a French CDI, a permanent contract, the employee works in Paris or elsewhere in Île-de-France, and you are thousands of kilometres from the meeting room where the separation will be discussed. In this situation many foreign founders hesitate between two exits: a dismissal for underperformance, with its warning letters, its notice period and its labour court risk, and a rupture conventionnelle, the mutual separation agreement that French law offers as an alternative. The second route looks simpler because both sides sign, yet it is one of the most formalised separations in the French Labour Code, with compulsory interviews, a fifteen-day withdrawal period, a statutory severance floor, an administrative homologation by the DREETS, the regional authority for employment and labour, and a twelve-month litigation clock before the conseil de prud’hommes, the French labour court. This article explains, for a foreign founder or a foreign parent company employing in France, what a rupture conventionnelle can and cannot do, how the specific severance is calculated to the euro, how homologation runs while you are abroad, and which mistakes French courts punish with annulment. Where dismissal remains the better weapon, it says so, with a link to the dismissal procedure explained step by step for employers abroad.

I. You Want to Part Ways With Your First French Employee: How a Rupture Conventionnelle Works and What It Really Costs

A. One or More Interviews, a Signed Agreement and Genuine Consent: The Procedure That Makes the Separation Valid

A rupture conventionnelle is an agreement by which the employer and the employee jointly settle the conditions of the rupture of their employment contract. Article L1237-11 of the Labour Code states the rule in terms that leave no room for pressure: “La rupture conventionnelle, exclusive du licenciement ou de la démission, ne peut être imposée par l’une ou l’autre des parties.” In English: the mutual separation, which excludes both dismissal and resignation, cannot be imposed by either side. It results from an agreement signed by both parties to the contract, and the whole section of the Code is designed to guarantee genuine consent. For a foreign employer this first sentence already decides a frequent scenario. You cannot present the agreement as the only alternative to a dismissal letter already drafted, and you cannot make the employee sign on the spot during a video call. If the employee refuses the principle, the rupture conventionnelle route is closed, and you fall back either on continuing the contract or on a dismissal for a real and serious cause, whose procedure, cost and labour court exposure are described in our guide to dismissing a first employee from abroad.

When both sides accept the principle, the statute organises the discussion. Article L1237-12 of the Labour Code provides that the parties agree on the principle of a rupture conventionnelle during one or more interviews, at which the employee may be assisted. The text lists the possible assistants: a person of the employee’s choice from among the company’s staff, whether a union representative, a member of a staff representative body or any other employee, or, where the company has no staff representative body, an outside conseiller du salarié chosen from a list drawn up by the administration. In a young French subsidiary with a single employee there is by definition no staff representative, so the outside adviser is the relevant option, and the employee must be able to use it. During these interviews the employer may also be assisted, but only when the employee uses assistance himself, and each side must warn the other in advance. The employer is assisted by a staff member or, in companies with fewer than fifty employees, by a person from the employer’s union organisation or by another employer in the same sector. A foreign president joining by video link should therefore treat the interview as a formal step, not as an informal chat: hold at least one real discussion of the principle before any document is signed, record its date, and never sign the agreement at the end of the first call without checking that the assistance rules were respected.

The interview requirement is not a formality a labour court will forgive. On 18 March 2026 the Social Chamber of the Court of Cassation restated the sanction in decision 24-22.713: “le défaut du ou des entretiens prévu par l’article L. 1237-12 du code du travail entraîne la nullité de la convention de rupture”, meaning that the absence of the interview or interviews required by Article L1237-12 nullifies the separation agreement. The same decision confirms an older precedent of 1 December 2016 and applies the rule to a protected employee holding an outside staff mandate, a situation a foreign employer of a tiny team can easily miss: an employee with one year of service can hold a labour court adviser mandate outside the company, and that protection plays fully during a rupture conventionnelle. Annulment in this context generally restores the contract with retroactive effect, which is why the interview stage deserves the same discipline as the figures.

Assistance during the interview is judged by its effect, not by symmetry alone. On 5 June 2019 the Social Chamber held in decision 18-10.901 that “l’assistance de l’employeur lors de l’entretien préalable à la signature de la convention de rupture ne peut entraîner la nullité de la rupture conventionnelle que si elle a engendré une contrainte ou une pression pour le salarié qui se présente seul à l’entretien”, meaning the employer’s assistance at the interview can only annul the agreement if it created constraint or pressure on the employee who came alone. In practice, arriving accompanied by counsel while the employee sits alone does not automatically void the file, but any insistence, any deadline imposed on the spot, or any suggestion that refusing will be punished feeds exactly the pressure test the Court describes. From abroad, the safest conduct is written and calm: propose the meeting in advance, state in the invitation that the employee may come assisted, let the employee choose the pace between the interview and the signature, and keep every message factual.

B. How Much You Must Pay: The Statutory Severance Floor, the Salary Base and Two Worked Examples

The agreement must define the conditions of the rupture, starting with money. Article L1237-13 of the Labour Code provides that “le montant de l’indemnité spécifique de rupture conventionnelle qui ne peut pas être inférieur à celui de l’indemnité prévue à l’article L. 1234-9”, meaning the specific rupture indemnity cannot be lower than the severance set by Article L1234-9. That floor is mandatory, and the DREETS checks it at homologation: the administration must give reasons for any refusal, and a figure below the statutory minimum is one of the standard refusal grounds listed by the official procedure guide on service-public.fr. Offering less to save money is therefore not a negotiation tactic, it is a guaranteed refusal followed, if the employee goes to court, by litigation over an agreement that should never have been filed.

The floor itself is computed like a dismissal severance. Article L1234-9 of the Labour Code grants the severance to an employee on a CDI dismissed with eight months of uninterrupted service, except in cases of gross misconduct, and refers the rates to regulation. Article R1234-1 adds that the indemnity is calculated per year of service including the months worked beyond full years, with an incomplete year counted pro rata by complete months. Article R1234-2 then fixes the famous scale: “Un quart de mois de salaire par année d’ancienneté pour les années jusqu’à dix ans” and “Un tiers de mois de salaire par année d’ancienneté pour les années à partir de dix ans”, meaning one quarter of a month’s salary per year of service for the first ten years, and one third of a month per year beyond ten years. The salary base is the gross remuneration the employee earned before the rupture, and where a collective bargaining agreement or the contract provides a higher formula, that higher figure becomes the floor. Checking the applicable convention collective is therefore part of the costing exercise, just as it is when the same employer prices overtime for a first hire under the 35-hour overtime rules.

Two worked examples show what the floor means for a young subsidiary. First, an employee with exactly three years of service and a gross monthly salary of 3,500 euros: three years at one quarter of a month gives 3 x 0.25 x 3,500, which is 2,625 euros. Second, a manager with twelve years of service and a gross monthly salary of 4,000 euros: ten years at one quarter gives 10 x 0.25 x 4,000, which is 10,000 euros, plus two years at one third gives 2 x 4,000 / 3, which is 2,666.67 euros, for a total floor of 12,666.67 euros. These are minimums, not targets. In a negotiated separation the employee typically asks for a surplus above the floor, often calibrated against what a dismissal would cost the employer in notice, procedure and risk, and the employer weighs that surplus against the certainty of a clean, homologated exit. Anything the parties agree above the floor must be written as a precise euro figure in the agreement, because the DREETS reads the number and the labour court enforces it.

A final costing point for founders used to other systems: the French separation package is not limited to the specific indemnity. Accrued paid leave is compensated, the pro rata of any contractual bonus follows the contract, and the tax and social-charge treatment of the specific indemnity depends on how far the total exceeds the statutory floor, with scales that change over time. The figures should therefore be checked at signing against the current official scales rather than copied from a blog post, including this one. What the agreement itself must contain is fixed by statute and does not change: the amount of the specific indemnity and the date of the end of the contract, which Article L1237-13 provides cannot fall before the day after homologation. An end date written too early is a refusal or an annulment waiting to happen, so the calendar is always built backwards from the homologation, never forwards from the signature.

II. Getting the Agreement Homologated and Closed While You Live Abroad

A. TéléRC, Fifteen Working Days and the Twelve-Month Clock: The Homologation Timeline From Paris and Île-de-France

Signature does not end the contract; homologation does. Once both parties have signed, Article L1237-13 gives each side “un délai de quinze jours calendaires pour exercer son droit de rétractation”, a fifteen-calendar-day period to exercise a right of withdrawal, by a letter sent through any means that proves its date of receipt by the other party. Calendar days include weekends and holidays, and the official service-public.fr guide provides a simulator that computes the withdrawal end date from the signature date. During this window either side can walk away with a simple letter, which is why nothing irreversible should be organised before it expires: no announcement to the team, no recruitment of the replacement on the same post, no deregistration. A withdrawal sent on day fifteen by an employee who changed his mind is valid, and the contract simply continues.

After the withdrawal period, the most diligent party files the homologation request with the administration, enclosing a copy of the agreement, on the model form set by the ministry. Article L1237-14 of the Labour Code provides: “L’autorité administrative dispose d’un délai d’instruction de quinze jours ouvrables, à compter de la réception de la demande, pour s’assurer du respect des conditions prévues à la présente section et de la liberté de consentement des parties”, meaning the administration has fifteen working days from receipt of the request to verify compliance with the section and the genuine consent of the parties. Working days exclude Sundays and public holidays, so the instruction period usually spans more than three calendar weeks. If the administration stays silent, the same article provides: “A défaut de notification dans ce délai, l’homologation est réputée acquise et l’autorité administrative est dessaisie”, meaning homologation is deemed granted and the authority is divested. For a foreign employer the filing channel matters: the request is filed online through TéléRC, the Labour Ministry portal, which generates the receipt from which the fifteen working days run. Keep that receipt, because every later deadline is counted from it, and a file sent by post from abroad without proof of receipt leaves you unable to prove when the clock started.

Competence follows the employer, not the employee’s residence. Article R1237-3 of the Labour Code designates as the competent authority the regional director for the economy, employment, labour and solidarity of the place where the employer is established. A company whose registered office sits in Paris therefore answers to the DREETS of Île-de-France, even if the founder signs from another continent and the employee works remotely from another region. The Paris and inner-suburb practicalities are the same as anywhere in France, with one local accent: Île-de-France DREETS units process a very large volume of TéléRC files, so incomplete files, missing signatures, unreadable salary slips attached as proof of the base, or an indemnity figure that does not match the agreement, come back as refusals or clarification requests that restart the waiting. File once, file complete, with the signed agreement, the salary evidence consistent with the stated base, and the dates consistent with the withdrawal period.

A refusal is reasoned and therefore usable. The administration must state why it refuses, typically a missed procedural step or an indemnity below the minimum, and the parties can correct and file again rather than litigate. But every dispute about the agreement, the homologation or its refusal belongs to one court only. Article L1237-14 provides that any dispute over the agreement, the homologation or the refusal falls to the conseil de prud’hommes to the exclusion of any other contentious or administrative remedy, and that “Le recours juridictionnel doit être formé, à peine d’irrecevabilité, avant l’expiration d’un délai de douze mois à compter de la date d’homologation de la convention”, meaning court action must be brought, on pain of inadmissibility, within twelve months of the homologation date. The official guide confirms the same twelve-month clock runs after a refusal of homologation. This is a forclusion-style guillotine, not a flexible guideline: a claim filed in month thirteen is inadmissible, however strong the underlying grievance. Diarise the anniversary the day homologation is granted, keep the TéléRC receipt and the agreement for at least that long, and treat any lawyer’s letter arriving in month eleven as the start of a prud’hommes case, not as an invitation to renegotiate.

Two closing formalities protect the employer’s position after homologation. First, the end date written in the agreement takes effect the day after homologation at the earliest, so payroll, the final payslip and the France Travail attestation the employee needs to claim unemployment benefits must follow that date, not the signature date. Unlike a resignation, a homologated rupture conventionnelle preserves the employee’s access to the return-to-work allowance where the eligibility conditions, including a minimum work period, are met, which is precisely why many employees request this route and why offering it can unlock a negotiation that a dismissal would poison. Second, protected employees never go through homologation at all: Article L1237-15 sends employees with statutory protection to an authorisation by the labour inspector instead, with the contract ending no earlier than the day after authorisation. Before proposing a rupture conventionnelle, verify that the employee holds no mandate, inside or outside the company, because discovering a staff representative mandate or an outside labour court mandate at the homologation stage collapses the timetable.

B. Three Court Rulings That Decide Most Disputes: No Interview, Pressure in the Room, and the Harassment Defence That Fails

French courts annul rupture conventionnelle agreements for a small number of reasons, and three published decisions cover nearly all of them. The first reason is the missing interview, already described above: the Court of Cassation holds in decision 24-22.713 of 18 March 2026 that the absence of the interview or interviews required by Article L1237-12 nullifies the agreement. For a foreign employer the lesson is organisational. The interview can be held by video link, but it must be a genuine discussion of the principle of the separation, held before the signature, with the employee informed of the right to be assisted. A single call during which the president reads out the agreement and asks for an immediate signature is the exact pattern that produces the annulment, and no homologation cures it, because the DREETS verifies documents, not the reality of a conversation it did not attend. Diary discipline beats advocacy here: invitation mentioning the right to assistance, a gap of several days between the interview and the signature, and a signed agreement dated after the interview.

The second reason is pressure vitiating consent, assessed case by case. Decision 18-10.901 of 5 June 2019 holds that the employer’s assistance at the interview only annuls the agreement if it created constraint or pressure on the employee who came alone. The test therefore protects the employer who behaves correctly and punishes the one who corners the employee. Typical pressure facts in the case law include summoning the employee without notice, imposing a signature deadline of a few hours, threatening dismissal in case of refusal, or multiplying calls and messages until the employee yields. From abroad, distance can paradoxically aggravate the picture: a barrage of messages across time zones reads as harassment of the negotiation, while a calm written timetable reads as respect for consent. One practical rule follows: never link the rupture proposal to a dismissal threat in the same message. The statute itself states the separation excludes dismissal, and the first question a labour court asks when consent is challenged is whether the employee truly had the choice to say no.

The third pattern is the employee who signs and then argues the context made consent impossible, often invoking a dispute or harassment. Employers sometimes fear this argument more than they should, and employees sometimes rely on it more than they should. In decision 17-21.550 of 23 January 2019 the Social Chamber quashed an appeal ruling that had annulled a rupture agreement solely because it was signed in a context of moral harassment, holding that “en l’absence de vice du consentement, l’existence de faits de harcèlement moral n’affecte pas en elle-même la validité de la convention de rupture intervenue en application de l’article L. 1237-11 du code du travail”, meaning that without a defect of consent, the existence of harassment facts does not by itself affect the validity of the agreement. A pre-existing dispute between the parties does not invalidate the agreement either, as long as consent to the rupture itself was genuine and informed. The symmetry matters for foreign employers. An employee cannot obtain annulment simply by proving the relationship had deteriorated or that tensions existed; the employee must prove a defect of consent such as error, fraud or duress affecting the decision to sign. Conversely, an employer who knows of harassment complaints cannot treat the rupture conventionnelle as a cheap way to bury them, because the facts, once pleaded with a consent defect, support both annulment and damages. Where relations are already conflictual, document the employee’s initiative or agreement in writing, keep the withdrawal period genuinely open, and consider whether a dismissal with a fully documented file, as described in the dismissal guide for employers abroad, is not the safer route.

One category of employee requires a different track from the start. Employees with statutory protection, including pregnant employees, staff representatives and employees holding outside mandates such as labour court adviser, do not go through DREETS homologation: their rupture conventionnelle needs the labour inspector’s authorisation under Article L1237-15, and the inspector examines the file more intrusively than the DREETS, including whether the protection played any role in the separation. The 2026 decision 24-22.713 illustrates the trap for small companies: an outside mandate unknown to the employer still produces effects if the employee discloses it during the interviews, and the employer who never asked the question learns of the mandate from the inspector’s refusal. Ask every candidate for a mutual separation, in writing and before the first interview, whether they hold any elective or designated mandate inside or outside the company, and adapt the track before signing anything.

Conclusion

A rupture conventionnelle is the right exit when both sides genuinely prefer a negotiated separation: the employee keeps access to unemployment benefits, the employer buys certainty and a fixed cost, and the DREETS homologation closes the file within weeks. It is the wrong tool when the employee must be persuaded under pressure, when no real interview can be organised, or when a protection mandate points to the labour inspector instead. Price the floor exactly from the statute and the applicable collective agreement, build the calendar backwards from homologation with the fifteen calendar days of withdrawal and the fifteen working days of instruction, file a complete TéléRC file with the DREETS of the employer’s place of establishment, and keep every proof until the twelve-month litigation clock expires. Run from abroad with that discipline, and the mutual separation delivers what a dismissal cannot promise: an end date that holds. The founders who prepare this file properly usually arrive with the same documents that structure any French setup, from registration to first hire, as summarised in the complete setup guide for foreign founders.