You are British, you have been offered a job in France or you already work there, and since Brexit one question controls everything else: do you have the legal right to do that job on French soil? Before Brexit, British citizens could live and work in France without a permit. That era is over. You are now a third-country national, which means a national of a country outside the European Union, and any salaried job (emploi salarié, work performed under an employment contract for an employer) requires two interlocking authorisations: an autorisation de travail (work authorisation) tied to the job, and a carte de séjour (residence card) that lets you live in France while you do it. Get either one wrong and the consequences run in both directions: the employer faces the ban on irregular employment, and you can lose the job, the right to stay and, in the worst files, months of unpaid wages that only a court can recover.

This guide explains, in plain English and with the exact French legal texts, how a British citizen is hired lawfully in France after Brexit, what the payslip (bulletin de paie), the social security registration and the yearly tax return must show, and how to challenge a dismissal (licenciement) or a residence refusal before the French courts. Each French term is explained the first time it appears, so you can read the statutes, the préfecture letters and the employment tribunal papers without a dictionary. The backbone of the article is verified law: the Labour Code, the Code on the Entry and Residence of Foreigners (CESEDA), the Social Security Code, the General Tax Code and two rulings of the Cour de cassation (the French supreme court for civil and criminal matters) reproduced word for word. The official starting points for your own checks are the Brexit page for Britons on service-public.fr, the practical guidance on gov.uk Living in France and your tax account on impots.gouv.fr. What those pages do not give you is the British employee’s view of the whole chain, from the job offer to the prud’hommes courtroom. That is what this article adds.

I. How Does a British Citizen Get Hired and Work Lawfully in France After Brexit?

A. What Work Authorisation and Carte de Séjour Salarié Does a British Employee Need?

The starting point is blunt: a British passport no longer opens the French labour market. The employer who wants to hire you must obtain an autorisation de travail for the post before you start, and you must hold a residence card that covers salaried work. The work authorisation is applied for by the employer, not by you, through the online foreign-nationals system, and the préfecture (the local state authority that issues residence cards) will not deliver the card without it. The two steps are legally chained, and Article L. 5221-2 of the Labour Code states the entry condition in these terms: “Pour entrer en France en vue d’y exercer une profession salariée, l’étranger présente : 1° Les documents et visas exigés par les conventions internationales et les règlements en vigueur ; 2° Un contrat de travail visé par l’autorité administrative ou une autorisation de travail.” In ordinary English, a foreigner coming to France to take a salaried job must produce the documents and visas required by the applicable international rules, plus either a contract of employment endorsed by the administrative authority or a work authorisation. For a Briton recruited from London, that means in practice a long-stay visa endorsed for work, then the authorisation, then the card. Nothing in this chain is optional, and starting work while the file is still pending leaves both sides exposed.

On the employer’s side, the duty to check is personal and written into the statute. Article L. 5221-8 of the Labour Code provides: “L’employeur s’assure auprès des administrations territorialement compétentes de l’existence du titre autorisant l’étranger à exercer une activité salariée en France” In plain terms, the employer must check with the competent local authorities that the foreign worker holds a document authorising salaried work in France, unless the worker is registered as a jobseeker. A serious French employer will therefore ask for your passport, your visa and your residence card before the first day, and will re-check at each renewal. If a prospective employer tells you the paperwork can wait until after you start, treat that as a warning about the whole employment relationship, because the prohibition that follows applies to them directly. Article L. 8251-1 of the Labour Code states: “Nul ne peut, directement ou indirectement, embaucher, conserver à son service ou employer pour quelque durée que ce soit un étranger non muni du titre l’autorisant à exercer une activité salariée en France.” Nobody may, directly or indirectly, hire, keep in service or employ for any period a foreigner who lacks the document authorising salaried activity in France. Keep copies of everything you hand over and every receipt (récépissé, the temporary receipt issued while a file is examined) you receive, because these papers decide later disputes about who knew what and when.

Your own card depends on the contract you sign. If you are hired on a contrat à durée indéterminée (a CDI, an open-ended contract with no fixed end date), the card is the carte de séjour temporaire bearing the mention “salarié” (employee). Article L. 421-1 of CESEDA provides: “L’étranger qui exerce une activité salariée sous contrat de travail à durée indéterminée se voit délivrer une carte de séjour temporaire portant la mention ” salarié ” d’une durée maximale d’un an.” A foreigner working as an employee under an open-ended contract is issued a temporary residence card marked “employee” valid for a maximum of one year. The same article chains the card to the authorisation: “La délivrance de cette carte de séjour est subordonnée à la détention préalable d’une autorisation de travail, dans les conditions prévues par les articles L. 5221-2 et suivants du code du travail .” The card is only issued if a work authorisation has first been obtained under the Labour Code provisions. If you are hired on a contrat à durée déterminée (a CDD, a fixed-term contract), the corresponding card bears the mention “travailleur temporaire” (temporary worker) and follows the length of the contract. After a first period of lawful work, renewals and multi-year cards (carte de séjour pluriannuelle, a card valid for several years) become available, but each renewal re-tests the same two conditions: a genuine job and a valid authorisation. Diary the expiry date at least four months ahead, because working on an expired card with no renewal receipt puts you back under the prohibition quoted above.

Two groups of Britons sit outside this standard chain and must not let an employer or a préfecture push them into it. The first is holders of a Withdrawal Agreement card marked “Accord de retrait” (the residence document issued to Britons already settled in France before the end of the Brexit transition): they keep a standalone right of residence and work, and they do not need a fresh autorisation de travail for a new job. If an employer demands one anyway, show the card and the service-public Brexit page, and ask for the refusal in writing. The second is the frontier case of the British remote worker employed by a United Kingdom company while living in France: that arrangement raises separate questions of French payroll registration and social security affiliation, and it is not covered by a standard salarié card sponsored by a French employer. Do not let anyone file you in the wrong category. A salarié card tied to a French employment contract, a Withdrawal Agreement card and a remote-work setup obey different rules, and the refusal letters, the remedies and the courts differ accordingly. When in doubt, have the contract and the card read together before anything is filed, because correcting a wrongly granted status after the fact is slower than filing correctly the first time.

Practical discipline decides these files as much as the statutes. Ask the employer, before you resign your United Kingdom job or move your family, for written confirmation that the autorisation de travail has been granted, with its dates and the exact job title (intitulé du poste). Check that the contract’s title, duties and pay match the authorisation, because a material change of role can require a new one. Keep every payslip from day one, keep the renewal receipts stapled to the expired cards, and keep a dated copy of each filing at the préfecture. If the préfecture refuses the card or the renewal, the refusal must state the reasons and the remedies (voies et délais de recours, the courts and time limits for challenge): photograph the letter on receipt, note the date, and seek advice within days, not weeks, because the deadlines for the administrative courts run fast and a removal order (obligation de quitter le territoire français, an OQTF, the order to leave French territory) can accompany the refusal. Never work on the basis of a verbal promise that the papers will follow, and never let an employer keep your passport or your original card: only the authorities may retain identity documents, and only in the cases the statute provides.

B. What Must the Payslip, Social Security Registration and Tax Return Show?

Once hired, your protection lives in three documents: the payslip, the social security registration and the yearly tax return. French affiliation to the social security system does not depend on nationality. Article L. 311-2 of the Social Security Code states: “Sont affiliées obligatoirement aux assurances sociales du régime général, quel que soit leur âge et même si elles sont titulaires d’une pension, toutes les personnes quelle que soit leur nationalité, de l’un ou de l’autre sexe, salariées ou travaillant à quelque titre ou en quelque lieu que ce soit, pour un ou plusieurs employeurs et quels que soient le montant et la nature de leur rémunération, la forme, la nature ou la validité de leur contrat ou la nature de leur statut.” Every person of any nationality who works for one or more employers, whatever the pay, the form or validity of the contract or the nature of the status, must be affiliated to the general social security scheme. In practice the employer files a déclaration préalable à l’embauche (the pre-hiring declaration) before your first day, registers you with the URSSAF (the body that collects social contributions) and affiliating you to a caisse primaire d’assurance maladie (CPAM, the local health insurance fund). Your part is to check: within weeks you should receive a social security number (numéro de sécurité sociale), then a carte Vitale (the green health insurance card used at doctors and pharmacies). If no number arrives, ask the employer for proof of the declaration in writing. Months without registration mean months without health cover, without pension quarters (trimestres, the three-month periods that build French pension rights) and without daily allowances (indemnités journalières) if you fall ill, and reconstructing the record afterwards requires payslips you may no longer be able to obtain.

Read every payslip as if it were a legal document, because it is one. The bulletin de paie must show the employer’s identity, your name and job classification (the coefficient or level under the applicable collective agreement), the hours worked, the gross pay (salaire brut), each social contribution with its base and rate, the net social amount, the net taxable amount (montant net social and montant net imposable, the two reference figures used for benefits and for tax) and the net pay before income tax withholding (prélèvement à la source, the pay-as-you-earn deduction operated by the employer). The convention collective (the sector-wide collective bargaining agreement, for example Syntec for tech or the chemical industries agreement) often sets minimum pay, overtime premiums, the trial period (période d’essai) and the notice period (préavis, also called délai-congé). Compare the contract, the agreement and the slip line by line in the first month: wrong classification, unpaid overtime (heures supplémentaires) and a trial period longer than the agreement allows are the three errors that recur in British hires, and each is far easier to correct in month one than in month twelve. Keep every slip indefinitely in the first years; in a later dispute over dismissal pay, pension quarters or unemployment benefit, the slips are the evidence, and the employer is not obliged to keep your copies for you.

Tax follows residence, and a British employee living and working in France will normally be French tax resident. Article 4 B of the General Tax Code treats as holding their fiscal domicile in France persons who have “en France leur foyer ou le lieu de leur séjour principal”, their household or principal place of stay in France, and those who “exercent en France une activité professionnelle, salariée ou non, à moins qu’elles ne justifient que cette activité y est exercée à titre accessoire”, carry on a professional activity in France, salaried or otherwise, unless they show it is merely ancillary. A full-time French employment contract with a French home therefore points squarely to French tax residence. The consequence is the yearly déclaration des revenus (income tax return) filed online on impots.gouv.fr each spring: declare the French salary from the net taxable figure, declare any surviving United Kingdom income (rent, dividends, a part-year salary) on the supplementary foreign-income form, and claim expressly the relief under the France-United Kingdom double tax treaty (convention fiscale, the bilateral treaty allocating taxing rights) so the same income is not fully taxed twice. Keep the British P60 and P45, the French slips and both countries’ assessments together, because the treaty credit is claimed with numbers, not with general statements, and the French administration will ask for the United Kingdom proof.

Three practical traps deserve special attention in the first year. First, the 90-day rule runs the other way too: family members who visit you from the United Kingdom remain short-stay visitors unless they hold their own visa or card, and days they spend with you do not create rights for them. Second, a promotion, a transfer to another group company or a switch from full-time to part-time can change the job description on which the autorisation de travail was granted: have the employer confirm in writing that the existing authorisation covers the new duties, and if not, file the update before the change takes effect. Third, unemployment insurance (assurance chômage, the scheme paying allocations between jobs) and the resulting rights at France Travail (the public employment service, formerly Pôle emploi) depend on contributions actually paid and on a lawful employment record: undeclared work (travail dissimulé, work hidden from the authorities) builds no benefit rights at all, whatever was handed over in cash. The thread running through all three traps is the same: in France, only declared, documented work protects you, and every gap in the paper chain reappears years later as a missing pension quarter, a refused benefit or a lost lawsuit.

II. How Do You Challenge a Dismissal or a Refusal as a British Employee in France?

A. Which Dismissal Procedure and Severance Pay Can You Contest?

French dismissal law is procedural before it is substantive: an employer who has a genuine reason but skips the mandatory steps loses in court. The centrepiece is the entretien préalable (the preliminary meeting before any dismissal decision). Article L. 1232-2 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.” Before any decision, the employer must summon the employee to a preliminary meeting by recorded letter or hand-delivered letter, stating its purpose, and the meeting cannot take place less than five working days later. At the meeting you may bring a staff representative or, where none exists, an outside employee adviser (conseiller du salarié, a vetted volunteer listed by the labour authority). After the meeting the employer must wait before notifying the dismissal by recorded letter stating precise reasons (motifs précis, the factual grounds), because a vague letter (“you are dismissed for misconduct”) without dated facts loses on its own. If you receive the summons, do three things at once: confirm who will accompany you, start a dated file of the facts and emails that answer the allegations, and check whether the real motive is your residence papers, your sick leave or a discrimination ground, since each changes the legal route.

Money follows the same logic of exact texts. If you hold an open-ended contract and are dismissed with the required length of service, the statutory severance (indemnité légale de licenciement) is a right, not a favour. Article L. 1234-9 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.” An open-ended-contract employee dismissed with eight months of continuous service is entitled, except for serious misconduct (faute grave), to a dismissal indemnity calculated on prior gross pay. The rates sit in the regulatory part of the Code and the collective agreement may improve them, so compute both and claim the higher. Alongside severance, check the notice period actually paid or bought out, accrued paid leave (congés payés), the pro rata of any contractual bonus (prime), and the attestation for unemployment benefit, which the employer must deliver at the end of the contract: without it, France Travail cannot open your file. Never sign a solde de tout compte (the final-balance receipt) under pressure on the last day without checking the figures, because it carries a six-month challenge window that many dismissed employees discover too late.

British employees face one dismissal motive that rarely touches French colleagues: the expiry or non-renewal of the residence card. Here the Cour de cassation has drawn a line that every Briton should know, in a ruling about a night watchman dismissed for lacking a valid titre de séjour (residence document). The Social Chamber held, in Cass. soc., 23 November 2022, appeal no. 21-12.125: “Il résulte de ces textes que si l’irrégularité de la situation d’un travailleur étranger constitue nécessairement une cause objective justifiant la rupture de son contrat de travail exclusive de l’application des dispositions relatives aux licenciements et de l’allocation de dommages-intérêts pour licenciement sans cause réelle et sérieuse, elle n’est pas constitutive en soi d’une faute grave. L’employeur qui entend invoquer une faute grave distincte de la seule irrégularité de l’emploi doit donc en faire état dans la lettre de licenciement.” In short, an irregular administrative situation is necessarily an objective ground for ending the contract, outside the dismissal rules and without damages for dismissal without real and serious cause, but it is not in itself serious misconduct, and an employer alleging a separate serious misconduct must say so in the dismissal letter. The same ruling adds: “Seule la faute grave peut justifier une mise à pied conservatoire et le non-paiement du salaire durant cette période.” Only serious misconduct can justify a precautionary suspension (mise à pied conservatoire, removal from the post during the procedure) and withholding pay for that period. The practical meaning for a British employee is precise: if your card lapses, the employer may end the contract on that objective ground, but may not dress it up as misconduct to strip your wages, and the wages for the whole period of irregular employment remain due under Article L. 8252-2 of the Labour Code: “Le salarié étranger a droit au titre de la période d’emploi illicite : 1° Au paiement du salaire et des accessoires de celui-ci, conformément aux dispositions légales, conventionnelles et aux stipulations contractuelles applicables à son emploi, déduction faite des sommes antérieurement perçues au titre de la période considérée.” Illegally employed foreign workers keep the right to their pay and its accessories for that period. Renew early, answer any employer warning about your papers in writing with the renewal receipt attached, and if dismissal comes, have the letter tested against this ruling line by line.

Not every ending is a dismissal, and the alternative has its own traps. The rupture conventionnelle (the agreed termination by mutual consent, homologated by the labour authority) lets employer and employee part on negotiated terms with unemployment benefit rights preserved. Article L. 1237-11 of the Labour Code 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.” The parties may agree the terms of the termination together; it excludes dismissal and resignation and cannot be imposed by either side. For a Briton this route can be attractive, because the negotiated indemnity must at least equal the statutory severance and the calendar is agreed rather than suffered. But it is refused homologation (official approval) during certain protected periods, it requires at least one meeting and a fifteen-day retraction window (délai de rétractation) for each side, and signing one while your residence card depends on that very contract can end both the job and the right to stay in a single signature. Never sign an agreed termination without checking, in the same week, what it does to your card, your unemployment rights and your health cover, and never accept a “mutual” parting presented as the only alternative to a dismissal for misconduct: a consent extracted by threat is challengeable, but proving the threat later costs far more than refusing it now.

B. How Do You Bring the Case Before the Conseil de Prud’hommes?

The court for these disputes is the conseil de prud’hommes (the employment tribunal judging individual contract disputes), and its first stage is conciliation, not trial. Article L. 1411-1 of the Labour Code states: “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.” The tribunal settles employment disputes by conciliation, and judges them where conciliation fails. File at the tribunal of the place of work (or, for work outside any fixed establishment, where the hiring was done), and prepare the conciliation hearing as a real hearing: a quantified schedule of claims (bordereau, the itemised list of sums claimed), the contract, the authorisation and the card file, the payslips, the dismissal letter and the employer’s warnings. Many British files settle at this stage once the employer sees dated papers and exact figures, because French employers know what the next stage costs. If conciliation fails, the case moves to a judging panel (bureau de jugement), and where that panel splits, a professional judge (juge départiteur, the tie-breaking court president’s judge) presides. Representation by an avocat (a lawyer admitted to a French bar) is not compulsory but is strongly advisable once witness evidence, pay reconstructions or discrimination arguments enter the file, and the language of the proceedings is French throughout, with officially translated exhibits where the judge requires them.

The sums at stake in an unfair-dismissal case are framed by the statutory scale (barème Macron, the table of minimum and maximum awards). Article L. 1235-3 of the Labour Code opens: “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.” Where dismissal lacks a real and serious cause, the judge may propose reinstatement with accrued benefits kept. The Cour de cassation has upheld the scale itself against the argument that it breaches international law, holding in Cass. soc., 11 May 2022, appeal no. 21-14.490: “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.” The judge awards compensation falling between the statutory minimum and maximum. Build the claim accordingly: length of service, age, difficulty finding equivalent work as a sponsored foreign employee, and actual loss, all documented, because the judge sets the figure inside the scale on evidence, not on adjectives. And note the interaction with the earlier ruling: where the contract ended on the objective ground of an expired card, these unfair-dismissal damages are excluded, but the wage arrears and the flat-rate indemnity for irregular employment are not, so plead each head of loss under its own text rather than throwing every figure at the tribunal and hoping.

Time is the silent killer of these cases, and the clock for a Briton often runs on two tracks at once. On the employment track, Article L. 1471-1 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.” Any claim about the termination of the contract is time-barred twelve months after notification of the termination. Twelve months from the dismissal letter, not from the last payslip and not from the end of the notice period: have the claim filed and reasoned well before that anniversary. Wage claims (rappels de salaire) run on their own three-year track, which is why keeping the slips matters even after the dismissal deadline has passed. On the residence track, a refusal of the card or an accompanying removal order carries far shorter deadlines, counted in weeks or even days before the administrative court (tribunal administratif), with different emergency procedures (référé, the urgent-applications judge) where removal is imminent. Run both tracks from day one: file the residence challenge immediately to protect the right to stay, which also protects the practical value of the employment case, and file the prud’hommes claim methodically within its year. A dismissed employee who wins damages but has already been removed from France has won on paper; a claimant who secures the right to stay first can attend the hearings, accept a new sponsored job and negotiate from strength.

Discrimination arguments deserve a final word, because British claimants sometimes plead them too fast and too loosely. French law bans dismissal or sanction based on protected grounds (including nationality in the strict sense), and a dismissal tainted by discrimination is void (nul, treated as if it never happened), which reopens reinstatement and fuller compensation outside the scale. But the tribunal tests comparison and proof: who was treated differently, in what comparable situation, on what dated evidence. An employer who dismisses a Briton whose card expired, while keeping French colleagues with valid papers, is applying the objective rule of the 2022 ruling, not discriminating, however harsh it feels. The discrimination file that wins is the one with comparators and documents: the British employee dismissed for “poor fit” weeks after requesting the same pay rise granted to French peers, with the emails to prove it. If that is your file, plead discrimination expressly from the first submissions with the comparator evidence attached, because courts dislike the argument when it appears late as an afterthought. If it is not your file, run the procedural and severance arguments cleanly instead: a precisely pleaded procedural case beats a loosely pleaded discrimination case every time.

Conclusion

Working in France as a British citizen after Brexit is entirely possible, but it is a documented path, not an informal one. The autorisation de travail comes first through the employer, the carte de séjour salarié follows for open-ended hires, the payslips feed the social security record and the tax return, and each link conditions the next. Keep the chain intact by renewing early, matching every job change to its authorisation, reading every payslip against the contract and the collective agreement, and filing the tax return with both countries’ papers in hand. If the chain breaks at the dismissal end, answer procedure with procedure: test the summons and the letter against the five-day and statement-of-reasons rules, compute the statutory severance before signing anything, remember that an expired card ends the contract on objective grounds without creating misconduct, and file at the prud’hommes within the twelve months while challenging any residence refusal on its own shorter track. The two 2022 rulings quoted in this guide show how French courts reason in these files: exactly, textually and without sentiment. Meet them on that ground, with dated papers and numbered articles, and the British employee’s case in France is fought on equal terms.

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Telephone consultation: 80 EUR TTC with an avocat of the firm within 48 hours. Call +33 6 46 60 58 22 or write via the contact page. Bring your employment contract, the work authorisation, the residence card or refusal letter, the last three payslips and the dismissal letter so the advice starts from your papers, not from generalities.