Your Paris employee sends an email asking to leave by mutual agreement. You live in London, New York, Dubai or Singapore, you run a French SAS (société par actions simplifiée, the flexible joint-stock company most foreign founders choose) or SARL (société à responsabilité limitée, the limited liability company with stricter statutory rules), and you have never dismissed anyone under French law. The employee suggests a rupture conventionnelle, the French mutual termination agreement, and names a figure. Before you answer, you need to understand that this procedure is neither a resignation nor a dismissal, that it follows a rigid timetable controlled by the administration, and that the most innocent-looking shortcut, failing to hand the employee his own signed copy of the agreement, annuls the whole termination and converts it into a dismissal without real and serious cause. The Cour de cassation, the highest French civil court, has repeated this sanction three times in published rulings, quoted word for word below.

This article is written in English for the foreign business reader. It explains every French acronym the first time it appears: the CDI (contrat de travail à durée indéterminée, the open-ended employment contract, the only contract that can end this way), the DREETS (Direction régionale de l’économie, de l’emploi, du travail et des solidarités, the regional labour administration that approves the agreement), the DDETSPP (Direction départementale de l’emploi, du travail, des solidarités et de la protection des populations, the departmental office that receives the file in practice), the CSE (comité social et économique, the elected employee representative body), TéléRC (the official online portal where the agreement and the approval request are filed), France Travail (the public employment service, formerly Pôle emploi, which pays unemployment benefits) and the ARE (allocation d’aide au retour à l’emploi, the return-to-work allowance, i.e. French unemployment benefit). The companion guide to this article is the firm’s pillar page on setting up a company in France as a foreign founder, from bank account and Kbis to VAT and the first hire, which describes how the company and its first employment relationship are created. A second companion explains what happens when the trial period fails instead: ending the contract during the trial period while you live abroad. This article takes over after the trial period, when the employee holds a CDI and the only clean negotiated exit is the rupture conventionnelle.

I. How Do You Sign a Valid Rupture Conventionnelle When You Live Abroad?

A. Who can sign it, how must the interviews run, and why does the employee’s copy decide everything?

The procedure is open to any employer and any employee bound by a CDI, which is the open-ended contract, and to them only. Fixed-term contracts, known as CDD (contrat de travail à durée déterminée), and apprenticeship contracts cannot end this way. The statute states the founding principle in one sentence: article L. 1237-11 of the Labour Code provides that “La rupture conventionnelle, exclusive du licenciement ou de la démission, ne peut être imposée par l’une ou l’autre des parties.” Neither side can force it. The employee who asks for one can equally refuse your proposal, and you can refuse his, in which case each side keeps its ordinary rights: the employee resigns or stays, and you dismiss only through a dismissal procedure with stated grounds, examined in the companion article on trial-period dismissal linked above.

Once both sides agree in principle, the law requires one or more interviews at which the employee may be assisted. Article L. 1237-12 of the Labour Code organises this assistance in detail: the employee may be accompanied by a person of his choice belonging to the company’s staff, and, where the company has no elected staff representation, by an outside staff counsellor chosen from a list drawn up by the administration. The symmetry rule matters for a small foreign-owned company: if the employee brings an adviser, you may also be assisted, and you must warn the employee beforehand; but if the employee comes alone, you must come alone too. In a Paris subsidiary with three employees and no CSE, the practical consequence is that the employee can bring an outside counsellor to a video call while you sit in another country, so prepare the meeting as a real negotiation with written notes rather than an informal chat. The official guidance on service-public.fr confirms the employer’s position in that situation: where the employee is assisted, the employer may be accompanied by a person of his choice belonging to the staff, and where the employee comes alone, the employer cannot be assisted.

The written agreement must state the conditions of the termination, including the amount of the specific termination payment and the date on which the contract ends. In practice the form is completed on the TéléRC portal, then downloaded, printed in three copies and signed and dated by hand by both sides, with the official guidance specifying that the dates and signatures are preceded by the handwritten words “lu et approuvé” (read and approved), as described on service-public.fr. One copy is for the employee, one for you, one for the administration’s file. For a founder abroad, the operational point is that a signature collected by email or through an unsigned PDF exchange does not satisfy this circuit: organise a signing session, by post with acknowledgement of receipt or in person during a Paris trip, and keep proof of every step.

The copy handed to the employee is the single most litigated point in the entire procedure, and the case law is unforgiving. In a published ruling of 6 February 2013, appeal number 11-27.000, the Cour de cassation held that “la remise d’un exemplaire de la convention de rupture au salarié est nécessaire à la fois pour que chacune des parties puisse demander l’homologation de la convention, dans les conditions prévues par l’article L. 1237-14 du code du travail, et pour garantir le libre consentement du salarié, en lui permettant d’exercer ensuite son droit de rétractation en connaissance de cause”, and it approved the appeal court which had deduced from the missing copy that the agreement was void, as published on courdecassation.fr. Six years later the same chamber tightened the screw: no presumption is allowed, and the judge must verify actual delivery, since in its ruling of 3 July 2019, appeal number 18-14.414, it held that by deciding as it did “sans constater qu’un exemplaire de la convention de rupture avait été remis au salarié, la cour d’appel a violé les textes susvisés”, as published on courdecassation.fr. Finally, on 23 September 2020, appeal number 18-25.770, the court allocated the burden of proof and stated the sanction in the clearest terms: “à défaut d’une telle remise, la convention de rupture est nulle”, and “en cas de contestation, il appartient à celui qui invoque cette remise d’en rapporter la preuve”, as published on courdecassation.fr. For a company run from abroad, the lesson is concrete: send the employee’s copy by registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt, or have him sign a dated receipt, and file that proof with the TéléRC submission. A courier email saying “please find attached the signed agreement” has repeatedly failed to convince labour courts.

B. How do the cooling-off period, the administration’s approval and the calendar work from another time zone?

Signature is only the midpoint of the procedure. From the date both sides sign, each party has a cooling-off right: article L. 1237-13 of the Labour Code states that “A compter de la date de sa signature par les deux parties, chacune d’entre elles dispose d’un délai de quinze jours calendaires pour exercer son droit de rétractation”, and that this right is exercised “sous la forme d’une lettre adressée par tout moyen attestant de sa date de réception par l’autre partie.” Calendar days include weekends and holidays, and the letter must prove its delivery date, so from abroad use registered mail with acknowledgement of receipt or hand delivery against receipt; an ordinary email is difficult to date with certainty if the other side disputes receipt. During these fifteen days, nothing can be filed and the contract continues normally.

Once the cooling-off period expires without withdrawal, the more diligent party, in practice the employer, files the approval request, called homologation, with the administration, together with a copy of the agreement, on the TéléRC portal or, for those unable to use it, on paper through the departmental office, as described on service-public.fr. Article L. 1237-14 of the Labour Code then gives the administration “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.” Working days exclude Sundays and public holidays. The same article attaches two decisive consequences to this stage: “A défaut de notification dans ce délai, l’homologation est réputée acquise et l’autorité administrative est dessaisie”, meaning silence for fifteen working days equals approval, and above all “La validité de la convention est subordonnée à son homologation”, meaning an agreement that is signed but never approved, or expressly refused, cannot end the contract. For a Paris-based employee the competent office is the Paris departmental unit of the DREETS for the Île-de-France region, reached in practice through the TéléRC portal; factor in French public holidays, August closures and the time difference when you compute the fifteen working days, and never set the departure date before the approval is acquired.

The departure date itself is locked by the statute: article L. 1237-13 of the Labour Code fixes it in the agreement and provides that it “ne peut intervenir avant le lendemain du jour de l’homologation.” A clause setting the end of the contract on the day of approval, or before, is unenforceable, and the safest practice is to set the date a few working days after the expected end of the instruction period. During the whole approval phase the employee keeps working normally and is paid normally; sick leave or paid holiday does not push the end date back, as service-public.fr confirms. There is no notice period to serve after a rupture conventionnelle, unlike after a dismissal or resignation: the agreed date is the last day, and any handover must be organised before it.

One category of employees follows a different and stricter track. Employees with a protection mandate, such as elected CSE members, union delegates or employees’ advisers, cannot use the approval circuit at all: article L. 1237-15 of the Labour Code provides that for them “la rupture conventionnelle est soumise à l’autorisation de l’inspecteur du travail”, and that “la rupture du contrat de travail ne peut intervenir que le lendemain du jour de l’autorisation.” The labour inspector checks both the freedom of consent and the absence of any link between the termination and the employee’s mandate, the CSE must be consulted first where required, and the TéléRC portal cannot be used for these files, as detailed on service-public.fr, which also warns that two months of silence from the inspector counts as a refusal, not an approval. A foreign founder who discovers after signature that the employee elected to the CSE six months earlier must restart on the authorisation track; signing a standard TéléRC agreement with a protected employee is a nullity waiting to happen. Disputes over protected employees do not go to the labour court at all: they go to the Minister of Labour within two months of the inspector’s decision, as service-public.fr states.

For ordinary employees, every dispute about the agreement, its approval or its refusal belongs to one court and is subject to one strict deadline. Article L. 1237-14 of the Labour Code provides that “Tout litige concernant la convention, l’homologation ou le refus d’homologation relève de la compétence du conseil des prud’hommes, à l’exclusion de tout autre recours contentieux ou administratif”, the conseil de prud’hommes being the elected labour court that hears individual employment disputes, in Paris the Paris labour court for employees working in the capital. The same article adds the guillotine: “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.” Twelve months from approval, not from departure and not from discovery of the grievance, after which the claim is inadmissible. Diarise that date the day approval arrives, because an employee who consults a lawyer eleven months later is still in time, and you must keep the file, the proof of delivery of the copy and the TéléRC receipts for at least that long.

II. What Does It Cost and Where Do Foreign Employers Lose in Court?

A. How do you compute the minimum payment, and what must be handed over on the last day?

The rupture conventionnelle always carries a mandatory minimum cost for the employer: the statute imposes a floor under the specific termination payment, and the employee keeps all earned pay. Article L. 1237-13 of the Labour Code provides that the agreement sets “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”. That reference article opens the right to a statutory severance payment for any employee on a CDI with at least eight months of uninterrupted service, since article L. 1234-9 of the Labour Code states that “Le salarié titulaire d’un contrat de travail à durée indéterminée, licencié alors qu’il compte 8 mois d’ancienneté ininterrompus au service du même employeur, a droit, sauf en cas de faute grave, à une indemnité de licenciement.” The calculation method is then fixed by regulation: article R. 1234-2 of the Labour Code sets the minimum at “Un quart de mois de salaire par année d’ancienneté pour les années jusqu’à dix ans” plus “Un tiers de mois de salaire par année d’ancienneté pour les années à partir de dix ans”, with part-years counted in full months, as article R. 1234-1 of the Labour Code adds that “En cas d’année incomplète, l’indemnité est calculée proportionnellement au nombre de mois complets.”

Take a concrete example, because this is where foreign employers miscalculate. An employee with five years of service and a gross reference salary of 4,000 euros per month, computed as the most favourable of the last twelve or three months under the standard rules, is owed at least one quarter of a month per year of service, which is 1,000 euros per year times five years, or 5,000 euros. That is the legal minimum; the parties frequently agree more, and service-public.fr notes that a higher figure can be negotiated and that the online simulator helps estimate the specific payment. Where a sector-wide collective agreement, known as convention collective, grants a higher contractual severance, that higher figure becomes the floor instead, so check the applicable agreement for your Paris activity before making an offer; the Syntec agreement for tech consulting and the Commerce agreement for retail both exceed the statutory scale. An offer below the floor does not merely trigger a top-up: the appeal courts have treated a manifestly insufficient payment as evidence that consent was not free, and the Cour de cassation’s 2013 ruling quoted above shows how strictly judges review the figures stated in the agreement.

On top of the specific payment, the employee receives everything already earned on the departure date: salary, bonuses pro rata, and the compensatory payment for unused paid holiday, since the employee receives a compensatory payment for paid holiday not taken by the termination date, as service-public.fr states. There is no payment in lieu of notice, because there is no notice: the contract ends on the agreed date. On that date you must hand over three documents, listed on service-public.fr: the work certificate (certificat de travail), the France Travail certificate (attestation France Travail, which the employee needs to claim benefit) and the final-pay receipt (reçu pour solde de tout compte). A founder abroad should mandate the French accountant or payroll provider in writing to prepare and send these on the exact departure date; late or missing certificates are themselves a source of damages before the labour court.

The employee’s situation after departure is one reason the rupture conventionnelle is so often requested. Unlike a resignation, which generally closes the door to unemployment benefit, a validated rupture conventionnelle opens entitlement: Employees who meet the qualifying conditions, including a minimum period of work, may receive the return-to-work allowance (ARE) under particular conditions, as service-public.fr explains. That asymmetry explains the negotiation dynamic you will meet: the employee asks for this route precisely because it preserves benefit rights, while a resignation would not. Factor it into the negotiation calmly. It is legitimate to agree a higher payment to secure a departure the employee wants, and it is equally legitimate to refuse a mutual termination and keep the contract running, for example where you suspect the request masks a planned move to a competitor. The only prohibited posture is pressure, which is where the second half of this article begins.

B. When does a disagreement or pressure destroy the agreement, and how do you run the process safely from abroad?

A rupture conventionnelle signed in a tense context is not automatically void, but a signature extracted by threats is. The Cour de cassation drew that line in a published ruling of 23 May 2013, appeal number 12-13.865: “Mais attendu que, si l’existence, au moment de sa conclusion, d’un différend entre les parties au contrat de travail n’affecte pas par elle-même la validité de la convention de rupture conclue en application de l’article L. 1237-11 du code du travail, la rupture conventionnelle ne peut être imposée par l’une ou l’autre des parties”, as published on courdecassation.fr. The same ruling approved the appeal court which, after noting that the employer had threatened the employee’s future career and pressured her towards a mutual termination, “a fait ressortir que le consentement de la salariée avait été vicié”, and reclassified the termination as a dismissal without real and serious cause. An existing disagreement over objectives, a poor appraisal or a tense reorganisation does not poison the agreement by itself; threats, ultimatums and moral harassment do. The official guidance draws the same line for today’s reader: the labour court can annul the agreement where the employee shows that it was signed when consent was not freely given, giving as examples a signature in a context of moral harassment or an employer that pressed the employee into choosing a mutual termination, as service-public.fr states.

The price of annulment is heavy and mechanical. When the labour court annuls the agreement, the employee may receive the payments provided for an unfair dismissal without real and serious cause, as service-public.fr explains, which means damages for dismissal without real and serious cause under the statutory scale, plus, where applicable, pay in lieu of notice with its paid-holiday supplement. The administration’s prior approval does not shield you: approval checks the paperwork and the apparent freedom of consent, while the judge re-examines consent freely, and the statute channels every such dispute to the labour court within the twelve-month deadline quoted above, since article L. 1237-14 of the Labour Code provides 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.” Either party can sue, so an employer who discovers that the employee concealed a competing activity can also bring the case, but in practice nearly all claims come from employees.

Running this process from abroad is entirely possible if you convert each legal requirement into a dated piece of paper. Hold the interviews by video call, keep the invitations and the notes, and record who attended and whether anyone was assisted, respecting the symmetry rule of article L. 1237-12 of the Labour Code. Complete TéléRC with the payroll provider, print and hand-sign three copies, and deliver the employee’s copy against a signed receipt or by registered letter, because the three rulings quoted in the first part of this article make that proof the whole case. File the approval request the day after the fifteen calendar days expire, watch the fifteen working days of instruction on a calendar that includes French holidays, and set the departure date after the approval, since article L. 1237-13 of the Labour Code forbids any earlier date. Give the accountant a written mandate to issue the work certificate, the France Travail certificate and the final-pay receipt on the departure date. Never write, by email or message, that the employee must sign or face dismissal: that one sentence is the exhibit the labour court will quote back to you under the 2013 case law on threats and pressure. And before proposing anything, check whether the employee holds a protection mandate, because article L. 1237-15 of the Labour Code sends that file to the labour inspector instead of the approval circuit.

For a company based in Paris or elsewhere in the Île-de-France region, two local details deserve attention. First, the approval file for an employee working in Paris goes to the Paris departmental unit within the Île-de-France DREETS, and processing slows visibly in August and around year-end public holidays, so a request filed in late July can easily drift into September; plan the departure date with that margin. Second, any dispute goes to the Paris labour court, the conseil de prud’hommes de Paris, which handles a very large volume of rupture-conventionnelle litigation and applies the national case law quoted here without local deviation. Neither point changes the procedure, but both change your calendar, which is the decisive variable when you manage the file from another continent.

Conclusion

The rupture conventionnelle is the cleanest way to part with a French employee on a CDI when both sides genuinely want to separate: one negotiation, one agreement, one administrative approval, one departure date, and preserved unemployment rights for the employee. Its safety comes entirely from discipline. Verify that the contract is a CDI and that the employee holds no protection mandate. Hold real interviews and respect the assistance symmetry. Pay at least the statutory floor, computed from the true reference salary and the true length of service. Hand the employee his signed copy against proof, file for approval only after the fifteen calendar days, let the fifteen working days run, and set the departure for the day after approval at the earliest. Above all, never turn the proposal into an ultimatum, because the courts annul pressured agreements and reclassify them as dismissals without real and serious cause, with the twelve-month clock running from approval. A foreign founder who follows this chain from abroad, with dated receipts at every step and a mandated accountant for the final documents, gets exactly what the procedure promises: a parting that stays parted.