The recorded-delivery letter is the moment every British employee in France dreads. You open it, you read the word licenciement — dismissal — and your first reflex is to think in English law: unfair dismissal, two years’ service, Acas, a tribunal in London. None of that applies. In France, dismissal follows French rules from the first day of a permanent contract, whatever passport you hold and wherever you were hired. There is no qualifying period to earn basic protection: the employer must invite you to a formal meeting, listen to your explanations, notify the decision by recorded-delivery letter stating precise reasons, and prove a genuine and serious cause. Your nationality, your accent and your Withdrawal Agreement residence permit change nothing about those duties. If you hold a Withdrawal Agreement residence permit, your right to live and work in France comes from the Withdrawal Agreement itself, not from your employer, and losing your job does not cancel it; the British government’s Living in France guide remains the starting point for the residence side while this article handles the employment side.

French dismissal law is mechanical, and that is good news for an employee who has just been dismissed. Each step the employer skips, each deadline it misses and each vague sentence in the letter becomes a weapon in your challenge before the labour court, the conseil de prud’hommes, the elected court that hears employment disputes. This article explains, first, the procedure your employer had to follow and the genuine, serious reason the letter must contain, and secondly, the money you are owed — notice, statutory severance, unused holiday — and how to challenge an unfair dismissal before the right court within the one-year limit.

I. Your dismissal letter has just arrived: the procedure your employer had to follow

A. The invitation, the meeting and the letter decide everything that follows

Everything starts before any decision is taken, with a formal invitation to a preliminary meeting, the entretien préalable. Article L1232-2 of the Labour Code provides: “L’employeur qui envisage de licencier un salarié le convoque, avant toute décision, à un entretien préalable. La convocation est effectuée par lettre recommandée ou par lettre remise en main propre contre décharge. Cette lettre indique l’objet de la convocation. 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 plain terms, the employer must summon you by recorded-delivery letter or by letter handed to you personally against a signed receipt, the letter must state its purpose, and the meeting cannot take place less than five working days after you receive it. A summons by telephone, by ordinary email or slipped into your pigeonhole without a receipt does not count, and a meeting held on the fourth day breaks the procedure. The official step-by-step description on service-public.fr for dismissal on personal grounds follows the same sequence and is worth reading alongside the Code.

At the meeting itself, the employer must tell you what it is considering and hear your side. Article L1232-3 of the Labour Code states: “Au cours de l’entretien préalable, l’employeur indique les motifs de la décision envisagée et recueille les explications du salarié.” You do not attend to receive a decision — the decision comes later — but to answer the allegations and put your explanations on the record. You do not have to go alone. Article L1232-4 of the Labour Code provides: “Lors de son audition, le salarié peut se faire assister par une personne de son choix appartenant au personnel de l’entreprise. Lorsqu’il n’y a pas d’institutions représentatives du personnel dans l’entreprise, le salarié peut se faire assister soit par une personne de son choix appartenant au personnel de l’entreprise, soit par un conseiller du salarié choisi sur une liste dressée par l’autorité administrative. La lettre de convocation à l’entretien préalable adressée au salarié mentionne la possibilité de recourir à un conseiller du salarié et précise l’adresse des services dans lesquels la liste de ces conseillers est tenue à sa disposition.” The conseiller du salarié, an outside staff adviser listed by the administration, exists precisely for employees of small firms with no staff representatives: a British employee in a Paris start-up or a Dordogne hotel with five staff can bring one free of charge. If the invitation letter omits that address where it should have given it, the procedure is already flawed. Bring every document that helps — appraisals, emails showing your results, medical certificates, the contract itself — and take notes, because what is said at the meeting often resurfaces in court.

After the meeting, the employer must wait, then notify the dismissal by recorded-delivery letter giving the reasons. Article L1232-6 of the Labour Code provides: “Lorsque l’employeur décide de licencier un salarié, il lui notifie sa décision par lettre recommandée avec avis de réception. 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. Un décret en Conseil d’Etat détermine les modalités d’application du présent article. Un arrêté du ministre chargé du travail fixe les modèles que l’employeur peut utiliser pour procéder à la notification du licenciement.” Three points matter for a British reader. First, the letter must state the reasons — a dismissal “for the reasons discussed at the meeting” with no detail is defective. If the reasons are vague, write back promptly asking the employer to spell them out in detail; the employer’s reply then counts as part of the letter. Secondly, the letter cannot be posted less than two full working days after the meeting date, so a letter franked the morning after the meeting is procedurally voidable. Thirdly, the government publishes official letter templates the employer may use, which is why a letter that follows no recognisable structure deserves a careful second look.

That letter then locks the whole dispute in place, and this is where many employers lose. The Court of Cassation, the Cour de cassation, France’s supreme court for employment cases, held on 23 October 2024 in ruling no. 22-22.206, published in the Bulletin: “Il résulte de ces textes que la lettre de licenciement fixe les limites du litige en ce qui concerne les griefs articulés à l’encontre du salarié et que le juge a l’obligation d’examiner l’ensemble des griefs invoqués dans la lettre de licenciement.” The dismissal letter sets the boundaries of the dispute, and the judge must examine every complaint stated in it. The facts show why this protects employees: a works supervisor employed since 6 April 1981 was dismissed for serious misconduct on 2 July 2018, asked for details on 5 July, received the employer’s fuller reply on 13 July, and went to the labour court; the Pau appeal court called the dismissal baseless without examining one of the stated complaints, and the supreme court quashed that ruling precisely because every stated complaint had to be examined. For you, the rule cuts both ways in your favour: the employer cannot invent new reasons in court that are not in the letter, and a judge cannot uphold a dismissal on a ground the letter never mentioned. Keep the envelope with its postmark, keep the employer’s follow-up reply stapled to the letter, and compare the two line by line with your adviser.

B. The reason in the letter must be genuine and serious, from poor results to misconduct

The heart of every French dismissal is a short phrase: genuine and serious cause, the cause réelle et sérieuse. Article L1232-1 of the Labour Code states: “Tout licenciement pour motif personnel est motivé dans les conditions définies par le présent chapitre. Il est justifié par une cause réelle et sérieuse.” Genuine means the facts must be real, precise and objectively verifiable — dates, figures, named incidents — not impressions. Serious means they must be grave enough to make dismissal a proportionate response. A letter that invokes a “loss of confidence”, a “breakdown of the relationship” or “underperformance” without numbers, warnings or examples fails both tests at once. British employees are sometimes dismissed with formulas imported from head office in London — redundancy-style language, “restructuring”, “role eliminated” — which belong to economic dismissal with its own heavy procedure and cannot be recycled as personal grounds. If the letter speaks of your post disappearing rather than your conduct, the employer has chosen the wrong legal track, and the dismissal falls.

Poor performance, the insuffisance professionnelle, is the ground most often used against foreign staff and the one most often badly pleaded. It covers inadequate results, repeated errors or an inability to do the job, but never a single mistake punished in anger, and never misconduct dressed up as performance. The employer must show objective evidence assessed over a reasonable period: appraisals, targets that were realistic and communicated in advance, warnings giving you a chance to improve, training offered where a skills gap was identified. A British sales manager dismissed for missing one quarter’s target, with no prior warning and targets set without regard to a realistic sales cycle, has a strong challenge; so does an employee whose “poor English” or “poor French” appears for the first time in the dismissal letter after years of satisfactory appraisals. By contrast, deliberate wrongdoing belongs to disciplinary law, where the letter must describe exactly what you did, when, and why it qualifies as misconduct.

French law grades misconduct in three steps, and the grade decides what money you keep. Ordinary misconduct, the faute simple, justifies dismissal but leaves your notice and severance intact. Serious misconduct, the faute grave, is conduct so grave that keeping you even through the notice period is impossible — theft, violence, a brutal breach of safety rules — and it strips away both severance and notice pay. That is the direct effect of the two articles examined below: statutory severance is owed “sauf en cas de faute grave”, except for serious misconduct, and notice compensation is likewise lost where serious misconduct is proved. Only wilful misconduct intended to harm the employer, the faute lourde, can cost you damages on top of the dismissal; the official scale of consequences for each grade of misconduct on service-public.fr sets out the three levels. Because the stakes are so high, employers routinely overstate the grade, labelling a performance issue as serious misconduct to avoid paying notice and severance. The challenge then focuses on the facts: did the employer act within days of learning of them, is there proof beyond assertion, and does the conduct truly make your continued presence impossible? A “serious misconduct” letter posted three months after the alleged events, or built on anonymous hearsay, rarely survives a judge’s reading.

Some reasons are not merely weak but forbidden, and a dismissal built on them is void, not just unfair. The Labour Code lists the nullities that take the case outside the ordinary compensation scale: violation of a fundamental freedom, moral or sexual harassment, discrimination, dismissal following an equal-pay court action or the reporting of crimes and offences, dismissal of a protected staff representative because of the mandate, and breaches of maternity and similar protections. In those cases the judge must award at least six months’ wages, as Part II explains. For a British employee, the practical triggers to watch are dismissals linked to pregnancy, to a request for a transfer linked to a spouse’s posting, to trade-union activity, to the refusal to accept harassment, or to whistleblowing about accounting or safety practices at the French subsidiary. Your nationality itself can never be a ground: French employment protections apply according to the place of work, and a dismissal that refers, even obliquely, to your British origin, your accent or your residence status invites a discrimination analysis. If any forbidden motive played even a partial role, say so in your first letters and preserve the evidence — messages, witnesses, the timing between your complaint and the invitation to the meeting — because nullity pays what the ordinary scale caps.

II. Your notice pay, your severance and your day before the labour court

A. Count your notice, your statutory severance and your unused holiday before signing anything

Dismissal does not end the contract on the day of the letter: a notice period, the préavis, normally runs first, and its length comes from your collective agreement — the convention collective, the sector-wide rulebook that sets minimum rights for your industry — or failing that from your contract and local custom. Executives in Paris often have three months, junior staff one or two; check the agreement named on your payslips rather than trusting the letter. If the employer releases you from working the notice, the money is still due. Article L1234-5 of the Labour Code provides: “Lorsque le salarié n’exécute pas le préavis, il a droit, sauf s’il a commis une faute grave, à une indemnité compensatrice. 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. L’indemnité compensatrice de préavis se cumule avec l’indemnité de licenciement et avec l’indemnité prévue à l’article L. 1235-2 .” A dispensation that sends you home the same day is therefore paid leave in disguise: salary, benefits and accrued holiday to the last day of the notice, on top of severance. Only proved serious misconduct removes it.

Statutory severance, the indemnité de licenciement, belongs to every employee on a permanent contract dismissed with at least eight months of continuous service. Article L1234-9 of the Labour Code states: “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. Les modalités de calcul de cette indemnité sont fonction de la rémunération brute dont le salarié bénéficiait antérieurement à la rupture du contrat de travail. Ce taux et ces modalités sont déterminés par voie réglementaire.” The rates, fixed by regulation, set a legal floor your contract or collective agreement can only improve: Article R1234-2 of the Labour Code provides that “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.” Part-years count pro rata: Article R1234-1 of the Labour Code adds that “L’indemnité de licenciement prévue à l’article L. 1234-9 ne peut être inférieure à une somme calculée par année de service dans l’entreprise et tenant compte des mois de service accomplis au-delà des années pleines. En cas d’année incomplète, l’indemnité est calculée proportionnellement au nombre de mois complets.” Take a concrete case: five years of service on a £-equivalent gross reference salary of 3,000 euros a month gives five quarters of a month, 3,750 euros minimum, before any more generous company agreement. The official severance calculator and rules on service-public.fr let you check the employer’s figure. The reference salary itself is the most favourable of your last twelve or three months’ average, including bonuses pro rata, so rebuild it from twelve payslips rather than accepting the figure pre-printed on the balance-of-payments receipt.

Unused paid holiday is the third sum employers most often underpay. France gives two and a half working days of holiday per month worked, and every day accrued but not taken at the end of the notice must be paid as holiday compensation on top of everything else. Reconstruct the balance from your last two holiday years: carry-over rules, sick-leave accrual and days imposed by the employer in August all change the total. Then come the end-of-contract papers, which the employer must hand over without you having to beg: the work certificate summarising your posts and dates, the employment-centre certificate that opens your rights to unemployment benefit, and the balance-of-all-accounts receipt itemising every sum paid. Register with France Travail, the public employment service, as soon as the notice ends — late registration delays benefit, and British newcomers sometimes wait for a translated P45-style document that does not exist in France. One warning before you sign the balance-of-all-accounts receipt: signature starts a short statutory clock after which the stated sums can no longer be challenged, so sign “under reserve”, take copies of every payslip and contract amendment first, and have the figures checked within days, not months. The official page on remedies for a void or unfair dismissal on service-public.fr summarises what each type of challenge can yield.

B. Challenge an unfair dismissal before the labour court within one year and claim the right scale

The court that hears you is the labour court, and its first mission is settlement. Article L1411-1 of the Labour Code provides: “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.” Conciliation first, judgment if it fails — and a well-prepared file often settles at that first hearing, because the employer’s lawyer can read a defective procedure as clearly as yours can. You have a free choice of forum: Article R1412-1 of the Labour Code states that “L’employeur et le salarié portent les différends et litiges devant le conseil de prud’hommes territorialement compétent. Ce conseil est : 1° Soit celui dans le ressort duquel est situé l’établissement où est accompli le travail ; 2° Soit, lorsque le travail est accompli à domicile ou en dehors de toute entreprise ou établissement, celui dans le ressort duquel est situé le domicile du salarié. Le salarié peut également saisir les conseils de prud’hommes du lieu où l’engagement a été contracté ou celui du lieu où l’employeur est établi.” Work in Paris and you can bring the case before the Paris labour court even if head office sits in Lyon; hired at a London job fair for the Paris office and that hiring place is available too. For readers in Paris and the Île-de-France, the practical points are the competent court for the place of work, the conciliation hearing a few months after filing, hearings conducted in French — arrange a sworn interpreter and translated key exhibits rather than hoping your spoken French will carry a legal argument — and a file built around the invitation letter, the meeting notes, the dismissal letter with its postmark, twelve months of payslips and the end-of-contract papers.

Speed matters more than in England: you have one year from the notification of the dismissal to challenge the rupture itself. Article L1471-1 of the Labour Code states: “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 the letter, not from the end of the notice and not from the day you find a lawyer. Wage claims run on a longer three-year clock, but the challenge to the dismissal dies at twelve months, so file within the year even if settlement talks are ongoing — talks do not stop the clock. Before the court, the judge re-examines both the procedure and the substance, and the Code places the burden of doubt on the employer: the judge forms a conviction from the evidence both sides supply, ordering any investigative measures considered useful, and Article L1235-1 of the Labour Code ends with the employee’s shield — “Si un doute subsiste, il profite au salarié” — if doubt remains, it benefits the employee. An employer that produces assertions without documents therefore loses the points it cannot prove.

If the dismissal is held to have no genuine and serious cause, the judge can propose reinstatement with accrued benefits preserved, and where either side refuses, awards compensation within a statutory scale, the barème Macron named after the 2017 ordinances that created it. Article L1235-3 of the Labour Code states: “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. Si l’une ou l’autre des parties refuse cette réintégration, le juge octroie au salarié une indemnité à la charge de l’employeur, dont le montant est compris entre les montants minimaux et maximaux fixés dans le tableau ci-dessous.” The table runs by full years of service: no minimum and one month maximum below one year, then a rising scale — three months minimum from two years, up to twenty months maximum beyond thirty years — with lower minimums in firms with fewer than eleven employees. Five years’ service thus yields between three and six months’ gross salary, ten years between three and ten. British claimants often ask whether this scale survives European review. On 9 April 2025 the Court of Cassation answered in ruling no. 24-13.958, holding that the scale provisions “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)”, and concluding: “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.” The same ruling adds that the European Social Charter’s Article 24 has no direct effect in litigation between private parties, so the Charter cannot be used to set the scale aside. Plead within the scale, document the harm — length of unemployment, age, family charges, the procedural faults — to pull the award towards the maximum, and reserve nullity arguments, where at least six months’ wages apply with no ceiling, for cases carrying a forbidden motive.

Conclusion

A French dismissal is a checklist, and the employer’s checklist is your checklist in reverse. The invitation by recorded delivery five working days before the meeting, the meeting where reasons are stated and your explanations collected, the assistance of a colleague or an outside staff adviser, the dismissal letter by recorded delivery at least two working days later stating precise reasons — each missing line is a procedural fault the labour court sanctions. The letter then freezes the dispute: only its stated complaints count, and only a genuine, serious, proven cause saves the dismissal, with doubt benefiting you. Money follows the same order: notice worked or paid, statutory severance from eight months’ service at a quarter-month then a third-month per year, unused holiday on top, and the end-of-contract papers that open unemployment benefit. Challenge the rupture within twelve months before the labour court of the place of work, aim inside the compensation scale documented to its maximum, and plead nullity with its six-month floor wherever a forbidden motive appears. The British employee who files the envelope, counts the days and rebuilds the reference salary from twelve payslips arrives at conciliation with the stronger file — and most defective dismissals settle there.

Need a quick opinion on your case

Telephone consultation within 48 hours with a lawyer from the firm. We can review your dismissal letter, your notice and severance figures and your deadline for the labour court with you. Call Maître Reda Kohen at +33 6 46 60 58 22. Contact the firm.