You live in London, New York, Montreal, Dubai or Singapore, and six months ago your French company hired its very first employee in France: a sales representative, an office manager, a developer, the person who was supposed to be your hands on the ground while you run everything from abroad. Today that hire is not working out. Targets are missed, clients complain, the person is repeatedly absent, or the role itself has become useless since your strategy changed. Your instinct as a founder is to end the contract quickly, with one phone call and a final payment, exactly as you would at home. In France that instinct is the most expensive reflex you can have. Dismissing an employee (licenciement) follows a written procedure measured in days, with a mandatory meeting, a reasoned letter sent by registered post, and three departure documents, and each skipped step converts mechanically into damages before the labour court (conseil de prud’hommes), the employment tribunal that hears almost all dismissal disputes. The alternative, a negotiated separation called rupture conventionnelle, is often the smarter exit for a foreign employer, but it has its own two-meeting procedure, a fifteen-day cooling-off period and a State approval (homologation) without which the agreement is worth nothing. This guide explains, for a foreign owner or director running a French company from abroad, how to dismiss your first employee lawfully at a distance, what each type of exit really costs, how the negotiated route works through the online approval portal, and how to defend yourself when the employee challenges everything before the labour court. Every decisive rule below is quoted from the statute or ruling that states it, so you can check each one.

I. How do you lawfully dismiss your first employee in France when you live abroad?

A dismissal for personal reasons (licenciement pour motif personnel), which covers underperformance, misconduct and unsuitability, is the ordinary tool when the problem lies with the employee rather than with the company’s finances. It is available only for open-ended contracts (contrats à durée indéterminée, universally called CDI), and French law subjects it to a three-step procedure plus a documentary closing sequence that you must run from abroad with the same rigour as if you were in Paris. Distance changes none of the deadlines; it only makes proof harder, which is why every step below insists on the paper trail.

A. Check the contract type, then run the three-step dismissal procedure from abroad

Before writing anything, identify what you actually signed, because the dismissal procedure described below applies to a CDI and nothing else. If your first hire is still in the trial period (période d’essai), ending the relationship is far simpler: no dismissal procedure and no statement of reasons are required, but you must still give the statutory notice (délai de prévenance), which grows with the employee’s time in the company. Article L. 1221-25 of the Code du travail (the Labour Code, the statute that governs all employment relationships in France) provides that where the employer ends the contract during or at the end of the trial period, the employee must be warned within a period of at least twenty-four hours below eight days of presence, forty-eight hours between eight days and one month of presence, two weeks after one month of presence, and one month after three months of presence, and it adds that failure to observe this notice period opens a right to compensatory payment equal to the wages and benefits the employee would have received. If instead you hired on a fixed-term contract (contrat à durée déterminée, known as CDD), you generally cannot terminate early at all: article L. 1243-1 of the Code du travail states that unless the parties agree, a fixed-term contract may be broken before its end date only in cases of serious misconduct (faute grave), force majeure, or unfitness certified by the occupational doctor (médecin du travail). Ending a CDD early without one of these grounds exposes you to damages equal to the wages due until the planned end of the contract. Our companion guide on hiring your first employee in France as a foreign company explains which contract to choose at the start; if you already chose a CDI, which is the standard case for a lasting first hire, the three steps below are your mandatory path, and the general guide to setting up a company in France as a foreign founder puts this dismissal risk in the wider picture of running the company at a distance.

Step one is the written invitation to a preliminary meeting (convocation à un entretien préalable). Article L. 1232-2 of the Code du travail states: “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 for a founder abroad: before any decision is taken, you summon the employee to a meeting, by registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt (lettre recommandée avec accusé de réception, abbreviated LRAR) or by letter handed over in person against a signed receipt, the letter states its purpose, and the meeting cannot take place less than five working days (jours ouvrables, meaning every day of the week except the weekly rest day, generally Sunday, and public holidays) after presentation of the registered letter or hand delivery. From abroad, send the LRAR through your French counsel or your registered office address so that the postal proof is established in France, keep the acknowledgment receipt, and count the five days with care: the Cour de cassation (the supreme court for civil, commercial, employment and criminal matters, whose Social Chamber, the chambre sociale, decides employment cases) held in a 2023 ruling that the five-day period starts running the day after presentation of the registered letter, so that a meeting held once the employee has enjoyed five full working days is regular. The Court stated: “Selon ce texte, l’entretien préalable ne peut avoir lieu moins de cinq jours ouvrables après la présentation de la lettre recommandée ou de la remise en main propre de la lettre de convocation”, and it quashed an appeal decision that had miscounted the period, explaining that “le délai de cinq jours avait commencé à courir le 13 janvier 2018, le jour suivant la présentation de la lettre recommandée, en sorte qu’à la date de l’entretien fixé au 24 janvier suivant, la salariée avait bénéficié d’un délai de cinq jours ouvrables pleins” (Cass. soc., 6 Sept. 2023, No. 22-11.661). The official service-public.fr page on the dismissal procedure for personal reasons confirms the same five-day minimum between presentation of the letter and the meeting. Because this ruling shows judges counting days on the calendar with zero tolerance, never schedule the meeting exactly on the fifth day when you compute from abroad with time-zone delays; add a safety margin and document the presentation date from the postal receipt.

Step two is the meeting itself, and you should treat it as a real hearing rather than a formality. The employee may come alone or accompanied, either by another employee of the company or, where the company has no staff representatives, by an outside adviser listed by the administration; you may be assisted by a member of the company or by your lawyer. State the reasons you are considering, listen to the employee’s explanations, and take notes, because what is said at this meeting frames the letter that follows. If you live abroad, two organisations work in practice: either you fly in for the meeting, which remains the safest option for a first dismissal, or you give a written mandate (pouvoir) to a person in France, typically your lawyer or a trusted manager, to conduct the meeting in your place, with the mandate letter kept in the file. A video call with nobody physically present beside a documented mandate is fragile, since the employee can later claim the meeting was a pretence; if distance forces remote participation, have your representative physically present with the employee and join yourself by video, and record attendance in writing signed by those present.

Step three is the dismissal letter (lettre de licenciement), which is the single most litigated document in French employment law. Article L. 1232-6 of the Code du travail 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.” The letter must therefore be sent by LRAR, state the reasons, and leave at least two full working days after the scheduled meeting date. The administration publishes standard models (modèles) for this letter, and using them from abroad through counsel avoids the classic mistake of a letter that is too vague, too violent or too long. The reason this letter matters so much is a rule the Cour de cassation repeats constantly: the letter fixes the boundaries of the dispute. In a leading 2020 decision the Social Chamber held: “S’agissant d’un licenciement prononcé à titre disciplinaire, si la lettre de licenciement fixe les limites du litige en ce qui concerne les griefs articulés à l’encontre du salarié et les conséquences que l’employeur entend en tirer quant aux modalités de rupture, il appartient au juge de qualifier les faits invoqués” (Cass. soc., 16 Sept. 2020, No. 18-25.943). Concretely, no reason outside the letter can be added later before the judge, while the judge freely reclassifies the facts you did state: an appeal court that threw out a dismissal because the employer had labelled the facts as requiring an intent to harm, when ordinary serious cause would have sufficed, was quashed for that exact confusion. Draft the letter in French, stick to dated, checkable facts (missed targets with figures, written warnings with dates, specific incidents with witnesses), and qualify them prudently rather than inflating them into serious misconduct you cannot prove.

Once the letter is sent, the closing documents (documents de fin de contrat) must follow at the end of the contract, and founders abroad forget them more often than any other step. Three papers are mandatory. First, the employment certificate (certificat de travail): article L. 1234-19 of the Code du travail states: “A l’expiration du contrat de travail, l’employeur délivre au salarié un certificat dont le contenu est déterminé par voie réglementaire.” Second, the final payment receipt (reçu pour solde de tout compte), which itemises every sum paid on departure: article L. 1234-20 of the Code du travail provides: “Le solde de tout compte, établi par l’employeur et dont le salarié lui donne reçu, fait l’inventaire des sommes versées au salarié lors de la rupture du contrat de travail. Le reçu pour solde de tout compte peut être dénoncé dans les six mois qui suivent sa signature, délai au-delà duquel il devient libératoire pour l’employeur pour les sommes qui y sont mentionnées.” Third, the unemployment certificate (attestation d’assurance chômage) that lets the former employee claim benefits: article R. 1234-9 of the Code du travail requires the employer to deliver to the employee, at expiry or rupture of the contract, the certificates allowing him to claim the benefits mentioned in article L. 5421-2, and to transmit them without delay to the operator France Travail (the public employment service, formerly Pôle emploi), electronically for employers with at least eleven employees. Missing certificates do not cancel the dismissal, but they generate separate damages for the harm suffered, and a file without signed receipts for these three documents signals negligence to the judge before the merits are even discussed. Send them by LRAR with the final payslip, keep every receipt, and have your payroll provider (prestataire de paie) confirm the balances in writing.

B. What the exit costs: notice, statutory severance and the judge-made scale for unfair dismissal

Every dismissal for personal reasons must rest on a real and serious cause (cause réelle et sérieuse), which is the golden rule of French dismissal law. Article L. 1232-1 of the Code du travail 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.” Real means the facts exist and are objectively verifiable; serious means they are grave enough to make continuing the contract impossible or at least genuinely harmful. Persistent underperformance documented by objectives, warnings and appraisals can qualify; a single bad month, a personality clash, or reasons connected to the employee’s health, pregnancy, union activity or discrimination complaints cannot. Where you allege misconduct, grade it honestly: ordinary serious cause preserves the employee’s rights to notice and severance, serious misconduct (faute grave) removes notice and severance but still requires proof of facts making the employee’s presence in the company impossible, and gross misconduct with intent to harm (faute lourde) is reserved for deliberate harm such as theft, sabotage or proven disloyalty. Inflating ordinary failings into serious misconduct is the costliest drafting error a foreign employer can make, because the judge simply reclassifies downward and you lose credibility on everything else, exactly as the 2020 ruling above demonstrates.

The statutory bill for a clean dismissal has three lines: the notice period (préavis), the severance payment (indemnité de licenciement), and accrued paid leave (congés payés). The notice period is fixed by the contract or, far more often, by the applicable collective agreement (convention collective, the sector-wide agreement that sets minimum working conditions for your industry and is identified by its IDCC number): one to three months is typical for a first employee with employee or supervisor status (employé, agent de maîtrise), longer for executives (cadres). During notice the contract continues and the salary is due; if you exempt the employee from working the notice, the corresponding payment (indemnité compensatrice de préavis) is still due in full. Statutory severance belongs to any employee on an open-ended contract dismissed with at least eight months of continuous service, except in cases of serious misconduct: article L. 1234-9 of the Code du travail provides: “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 minimum amount is set by regulation, and article R. 1234-2 of the Code du travail fixes it as follows: “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.” Your collective agreement frequently grants more, through a conventional severance (indemnité conventionnelle) computed on a richer base or with a higher rate, and the employee always receives the better of the two. For a first employee with under a year of service, the sums look modest, which is precisely why the negotiated exit in Part II often costs barely more while buying legal peace.

If the dismissal is judged without real and serious cause (sans cause réelle et sérieuse), the price is no longer set by you but by the Macron scale (barème Macron), the statutory table of minimum and maximum damages that has framed every French dismissal dispute since the 2017 reform. Article L. 1235-3 of the Code du travail 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.” For an employee with less than one year of service the ceiling is low, one to two months’ wages depending on company size, and it rises with seniority to a maximum of twenty months. Two recent Cour de cassation decisions confirm that appeal courts must apply this scale strictly and compute within its bands: in April 2025 the Social Chamber recalled, visa the scale provisions together with ILO Convention No. 158 and the European Social Charter, that “en application de l’article L. 1235-3 du code du travail, si le licenciement d’un salarié survient pour une cause qui n’est pas réelle et sérieuse, le juge octroie au salarié une indemnité à la charge de l’employeur, dont le montant est compris entre des montants minimaux et maximaux fixés par ce texte”, adding that “Pour déterminer le montant de l’indemnité, le juge peut tenir compte, le cas échéant, des indemnités de licenciement versées à l’occasion de la rupture, à l’exception de l’indemnité de licenciement mentionnée à l’article L. 1234-9” (Cass. soc., 9 Apr. 2025, No. 24-13.958), and in May 2025 it quashed again an appeal court that had exceeded the scale, repeating the same formula and resetting the award inside the legal band (Cass. soc., 21 May 2025, No. 24-10.362). The practical lesson for a foreign employer is double-edged and reassuring: your exposure for an ordinary unfair dismissal of a short-service first employee is capped and quantifiable, which makes settlement rational, but procedural faults and nullity cases (harassment, discrimination, violation of a fundamental freedom) escape the scale entirely and return to full compensation, which is why the procedure in section A must be executed without shortcuts.

II. Should you dismiss or negotiate a rupture conventionnelle, and how do you survive a prud’hommes claim?

For a first employee with short service, the unilateral dismissal described above is lawful but adversarial by construction: even a clean file can produce a claim, and you will defend it from another country. The French system offers a second track designed exactly for this situation, the negotiated rupture (rupture conventionnelle), which ends the CDI by mutual agreement, gives the employee unemployment benefits and a guaranteed minimum payment, and gives you, in exchange, a closure that is far harder to attack. Choosing between the two tracks, then organising your defence if the employee sues anyway, is the second half of the decision you must make from abroad.

A. The negotiated exit from abroad: talks, fifteen-day withdrawal and State approval

The negotiated rupture is open to any employer and employee on an open-ended contract who agree together on the conditions of the separation. Article L. 1237-11 of the Code du travail states: “L’employeur et le salarié peuvent convenir en commun des conditions de la rupture du contrat de travail qui les lie. La rupture conventionnelle, exclusive du licenciement ou de la démission, ne peut être imposée par l’une ou l’autre des parties. Elle résulte d’une convention signée par les parties au contrat. Elle est soumise aux dispositions de la présente section destinées à garantir la liberté du consentement des parties.” Three consequences follow for a founder negotiating at a distance. First, the process cannot be imposed: any threat, pressure or dismissal held in reserve while you negotiate poisons consent and exposes the agreement to annulment. Second, at least one meeting (entretien) between the two parties must be held before signing, and the employee may be assisted exactly as in a dismissal meeting; hold it in France through your mandated representative if you cannot travel, and document it. Third, the content of the agreement is regulated, not free: article L. 1237-13 of the Code du travail provides: The agreement must set a specific rupture payment at least equal to the statutory severance. “Elle fixe la date de rupture du contrat de travail, qui ne peut intervenir avant le lendemain du jour de l’homologation. 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. Ce droit est exercé sous la forme d’une lettre adressée par tout moyen attestant de sa date de réception par l’autre partie.” The specific payment (indemnité spécifique de rupture conventionnelle) can never be lower than the statutory severance, the departure date can never precede the day after State approval, and each side has fifteen calendar days after signature to withdraw (rétractation) by any means proving the date of receipt, which from abroad means LRAR or hand delivery against receipt, never a simple email.

After the withdrawal period expires, the agreement must be approved by the administration, and this approval (homologation) is what gives the rupture its legal force. Article L. 1237-14 of the Code du travail states: “A l’issue du délai de rétractation, la partie la plus diligente adresse une demande d’homologation à l’autorité administrative, avec un exemplaire de la convention de rupture. Un arrêté du ministre chargé du travail fixe le modèle de cette demande. 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. A défaut de notification dans ce délai, l’homologation est réputée acquise et l’autorité administrative est dessaisie. La validité de la convention est subordonnée à son homologation. L’homologation ne peut faire l’objet d’un litige distinct de celui relatif à la convention. 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.” In practice the request is filed online through TéléRC (the téléservice de demande d’homologation de rupture conventionnelle, the official portal for filing approval requests), using the mandatory ministerial form, before the regional authority for economy, employment, labour and solidarities (the DREETS, direction régionale de l’économie, de l’emploi, du travail et des solidarités, acting through its departmental unit, the DDETSPP), which has fifteen working days to check the conditions and the freedom of consent, with silence counting as approval. The official service-public.fr page on negotiated rupture confirms the sequence of meetings, time limits and the TéléRC filing, including the paper fallback where the online service cannot be used. From abroad, have your counsel file on TéléRC, calendar the fifteen working days from the acknowledgment of receipt, and set the departure date only after the approval is acquired or deemed acquired; fixing an earlier date in the agreement invalidates the timetable and forces a restart.

The courts police consent in these agreements with uncompromising strictness, and a 2024 decision every foreign employer should know shows both directions of the risk. An employee who had concealed from his employer, during the negotiation, his plan to create a competing business with preparatory acts already performed, obtained the rupture and was then sued by the employer for annulment based on fraud (dol, deceit vitiating consent under article 1137 of the Civil Code): the Social Chamber rejected the employee’s appeal and approved the appeal court, holding that the deliberate concealment characterised fraud and the agreement was void. It then drew the consequence in a formula worth memorising: “Lorsque le contrat de travail est rompu en exécution d’une convention de rupture ensuite annulée en raison d’un vice du consentement de l’employeur, la rupture produit les effets d’une démission”, adding that “Ayant retenu que la dissimulation intentionnelle du salarié caractérisait un dol et que la convention de rupture était nulle, la cour d’appel a exactement décidé que la nullité produisait les effets d’une démission” (Cass. soc., 19 June 2024, No. 23-10.817). The mirror image threatens you directly: where it is the employee’s consent that was vitiated, by moral harassment, pressure, or a dismissal presented as inevitable while the agreement was signed, judges annul the rupture and treat it as a dismissal without real and serious cause, with the scale damages and severance that follow. Negotiate cleanly from abroad: no parallel dismissal letter in the drawer, no deadline ultimatum, a genuine meeting, a payment at or above the conventional scale of your sector, and a file showing the employee had time and advice. A rupture signed in these conditions is the cheapest dispute you will ever buy, because it closes the file for roughly the price of a short notice plus a modest premium, against months of procedure and the unpredictable cost of a contested dismissal.

B. The employee sues from France while you are abroad: deadlines, proof and your defence file

Assume the worst and prepare for it from the day you first consider the separation: the employee files before the labour court, and you defend from another country. The first question is time, and French law gives the employee a short fuse for attacking the rupture itself. Article L. 1471-1 of the Code du travail provides: “Toute action portant sur l’exécution du contrat de travail se prescrit par deux ans à compter du jour où celui qui l’exerce a connu ou aurait dû connaître les faits lui permettant d’exercer son droit. Toute action portant sur la rupture du contrat de travail se prescrit par douze mois à compter de la notification de la rupture.” Claims about performance of the contract expire after two years from knowledge of the facts; claims about the rupture itself expire twelve months after notification of the rupture, and the rupture-approval article adds its own twelve-month deadline from approval for disputes over a negotiated agreement. Practically, keep the complete file for at least two years after departure, longer if a dispute is pending, and never destroy the message history, payroll records or postal receipts of a year that is still open. Founders who change accountants or close mailboxes without transferring the archive discover during proceedings that neither the old nor the new provider holds the decisive exhibit.

The forum will be the conseil de prud’hommes with jurisdiction over the place of work, for a Paris-based first hire the Paris labour court, and the procedure starts with a conciliation hearing (audience de conciliation) before any judgment on the merits. You do not need to live in France to defend: a French employment lawyer represents you under a written mandate, filings are written and in French, and your personal attendance is rarely required, though it can help at conciliation in sensitive cases. Conciliation deserves a serious offer, because it ends the dispute the same day with a court-recorded settlement (procès-verbal de conciliation) that is enforceable and almost unassailable, while a refusal sends the case to a full judgment months later with an appeal possible. Price your offer against the scale: for a first employee with under a year of service, the judicial ceiling for an unfair dismissal is one to two months’ wages in most company sizes, plus the severance and notice the employee would have received anyway, so a settlement around two to four months all-in frequently beats the combined cost of counsel fees, management time and residual risk. Never ignore a summons (convocation devant le bureau de conciliation): default (jugement par défaut) hands the employee an enforceable title while you were looking elsewhere, and reopening it from abroad costs more than defending properly the first time.

On the merits, the burden logic favours the prepared. The judge reads the dismissal letter first and, as the 2020 ruling quoted above establishes, refuses any reason that is not in it while freely reclassifying those that are; the employer must then prove a real and serious cause with documents, not assertions. Build from abroad a defence bundle (dossier de défense) that mirrors what French judges expect: the signed contract and any amendments, the job description with quantified objectives, the collective agreement identifier, payslips and working-time records, written warnings with acknowledgment of receipt, appraisal reports, relevant emails and client complaints with dates, attendance and absence records, the complete postal file of the procedure with receipts, and the signed closing documents with their transmission proofs. Organise exhibits chronologically, number them, and write a timeline of who decided what and when, because the judge reading a foreign-owned company’s file asks one question: whether this is a serious employer that documented a genuine problem, or a distant shareholder that improvised a dismissal. Social charges and payroll regularity also enter the picture: if URSSAF (the unions de recouvrement des cotisations de sécurité sociale et d’allocations familiales, the bodies collecting French social contributions) disputes lurk in the file, regularise them separately, since a contribution dispute exploited in dismissal litigation paints the employer as disorganised. Where the employee alleges harassment, discrimination or retaliation for exercising a right, escalate immediately to specialist counsel, because those nullity cases escape the Macron scale and return to uncapped compensation; do not treat them as ordinary performance disputes.

Paris and the Île-de-France region add a practical layer worth knowing. A rupture of a Paris-based employee is approved by the Île-de-France DREETS, and Paris filings through TéléRC are processed by teams that see a high volume of foreign-owned company files and check consent indicators closely, including the gap between the signature date and the approval request and the consistency of the payment with the sector minimum. Before the Paris prud’hommes, conciliation benches expect the employer represented and the file complete at the first hearing; an absent foreign employer with an incomplete bundle starts with a structural disadvantage that no later brilliance fully repairs. Keep a reachable Paris address where court letters are actually opened every week, whether your registered office, your lawyer’s office under a proper mandate, or a domiciliation provider that forwards the same day, and instruct whoever holds it that every letter from a court, a DREETS or France Travail is scanned to you and your lawyer on the day it arrives. French employment litigation turns on dates, fifteen days here, twelve months there, and the founder who can prove when each letter arrived wins the deadline battles that decide a large share of cases before the merits are even reached.

Conclusion

Ending your first French employment contract from abroad is entirely possible, but it rewards method and punishes improvisation at every step. Verify the contract type first, because a trial-period ending needs only notice and a fixed-term contract can barely be ended early at all; then run the CDI dismissal procedure to the letter, five working days before the meeting, a genuine hearing, a reasoned registered letter at least two working days later, and the three closing documents with receipts. Cost the exit honestly, notice plus statutory or conventional severance plus leave, and measure any litigation risk against the capped Macron scale rather than against your home-country instincts. Where the relationship allows it, prefer the negotiated rupture: a real meeting, a payment at or above the legal minimum, fifteen calendar days of withdrawal, and TéléRC approval before the departure date buys a closure that a unilateral dismissal rarely delivers at comparable cost. Keep the full file for two years, answer every court and administration letter the day it arrives, and settle at conciliation when the figures sit inside the scale. Run this way, the end of a first hire becomes what it should be for a foreign founder: a controlled cost and a closed file, not the beginning of a cross-border dispute.

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