You run your French company from abroad. You have found the right candidate for your first strategic hire in France: experienced, available, motivated. There is only one problem: she holds a non-EU passport, and you are not sure what her residence card allows her to do. Can she start on Monday while the paperwork catches up? Can you, as a foreign-based founder, file the work permit yourself from London, New York or Dubai? What happens if the prefecture answers slowly, or answers no?

This is one of the most dangerous moments in the life of a young French subsidiary. French law treats employing a foreign worker without the correct authorization as a criminal offence, an administrative offence and a source of automatic back-pay at the same time. The three bills land together: up to five years in prison and a 30,000 euro fine per worker on the criminal side, an administrative fine of up to 21,750 euros per worker, and a lump sum equal to three months of salary owed to the employee even if you dismiss her. And all of it can be triggered while you were sitting in another country, convinced that a signed contract was enough.

This article explains, in English and step by step, how a foreign founder hires a non-EU citizen lawfully from abroad: who needs an autorisation de travail (work permit), who files it and where, which French hiring file you must build in parallel, what the employer tax costs, and what to do when things have already gone wrong — work started without a permit, or the administration refuses. Every French acronym is explained. Every decisive rule is quoted from the statute or from a 2026 ruling of the Cour de cassation, the French supreme court for civil and labour matters.

I. Before your non-EU hire can legally start: the work permit and the French hiring file

A. Does your candidate need an autorisation de travail, and who files it from abroad?

Start with the passport, not the CV. Citizens of the European Union, the European Economic Area and Switzerland work freely in France with no permit. Everyone else is, by default, subject to prior work authorization. The rule is strict: “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.” Article L8251-1 of the French Labour Code (Code du travail) adds that you may not keep a foreign worker in a job category, profession or geographical area other than the one written on her permit. Hiring your candidate for a Paris marketing job when her permit only covers a Lyon kitchen job is the same offence as hiring her with no permit at all.

Some residence permits carry the right to work with them, so no separate application is needed. The clearest example is the talent residence card: it allows its holder to carry out the professional activity for which it was issued, and the employer is dispensed from applying for a work permit. Foreign students are a halfway case: a student card allows employee work up to 60% of annual working time, meaning 964 hours per year, without a permit — but beyond that ceiling the employer must apply, and the employer must declare the hiring of a foreign student to the prefecture two working days before the start date. For the common salarié (employee) and travailleur temporaire (temporary worker) cards, the logic is reversed: a work authorization is mandatory, and a new authorization must be requested for each new employment contract. Never assume one permit covers every contract: check the exact wording of the card your candidate holds, and when in doubt treat the permit as required.

When a permit is required, it is you — the employer — who applies, not the employee. The application is filed online on the ANEF portal (Administration Numérique pour les Étrangers en France, the Interior Ministry’s digital platform for foreign nationals), and it is examined by the DREETS (Direction Régionale de l’Économie, de l’Emploi, du Travail et des Solidarités, the regional authority for employment and labour matters). A founder living abroad can file through the portal without travelling to France; what matters is the quality of the file, because the DREETS reviews three things in substance. First, the salary: it must reach at least the SMIC (Salaire Minimum Interprofessionnel de Croissance, the French statutory minimum wage) and be consistent with the qualifications and the collective agreement of your sector. Second, the employment situation: outside the shortage-occupation list (métiers en tension), the administration can hold the state of the labour market against you and expect evidence that no suitable candidate already present on the French labour market could fill the job. Third, your company itself: the DREETS checks that the employer is current on tax and social-security filings and has no record of illegal-work sanctions. A young foreign-owned SAS (Société par Actions Simplifiée, the flexible joint-stock company most founders choose) with clean filings passes this test; a company already flagged for concealed work does not.

In parallel with the permit, the Labour Code imposes a personal verification duty on you before any start date. “L’employeur s’assure auprès des administrations territorialement compétentes de l’existence du titre autorisant l’étranger à exercer une activité salariée en France, sauf si cet étranger est inscrit sur la liste des demandeurs d’emploi tenue par l’institution mentionnée à l’article L. 5312-1 .” In practice, the official guidance asks employers to have the prefecture of the place of work check the authenticity of the residence permit at least two working days before the planned start. Do it in writing, keep the prefecture’s reply with the hiring file, and never let the candidate start before you hold it. That two-day check is the cheapest insurance policy in French labour law: as section II shows, it is also the shield that protects an employer misled by a forged document.

Budget one more cost from day one: the employer tax (taxe employeur). When a foreign worker is admitted to residence for the first time for salaried work requiring authorization, for a contract longer than three months, the first employer pays a one-off tax to the State. The official scale depends on contract length and salary: for a contract of more than three months and less than twelve months, 74 euros at or below the SMIC, 210 euros between one and one-and-a-half times the SMIC, and 300 euros above that; for a contract of twelve months or more, 55% of one month’s gross salary below a high threshold, and a flat 2,567.15 euros above it; seasonal contracts cost 50 euros per month of activity. The tax is declared and paid with the company’s VAT (TVA, Taxe sur la Valeur Ajoutée) returns — on the VAT annex for companies under the standard VAT regime, or on the corresponding form for the others — for the month, quarter or year in which it became due, and immediately if the business closes. Founders who read our general guide on setting up a company in France as a foreign founder, from bank account and Kbis to VAT and first hire will recognize the pattern: in France every hiring step leaves a paper trail, and the trail is the proof.

B. Your French hiring file from abroad: DPAE, contract, payslips, DSN and health cover

The work permit is only half of a lawful hire. French law requires a full hiring file for every employee, and a remote founder must build it with the same rigour as a Paris-based HR department. The cornerstone is the DPAE (Déclaration Préalable À l’Embauche, the pre-hire declaration sent to the social-security collection body). “L’embauche d’un salarié ne peut intervenir qu’après déclaration nominative accomplie par l’employeur auprès des organismes de protection sociale désignés à cet effet.” No declaration, no lawful start — and the declaration must be nominative, meaning it names the exact worker for the exact job. File the DPAE online with URSSAF (Union de Recouvrement des cotisations de Sécurité Sociale et d’Allocations Familiales, the agency that collects social-security contributions) before the first day of work, download the acknowledgement of receipt, and store it with the contract. Labour inspectors and URSSAF auditors treat a missing DPAE as a presumption of concealed work, which immediately raises the stakes described in section II.

Next comes the written contract. French law does not require every open-ended contract to be in writing to be valid, but hiring a foreign worker without a precise written document is reckless: the permit, the prefecture check, the salary stated to the DREETS and the job description must all match the contract line by line, because any mismatch can be read as employment outside the authorized category. State the job title, duties, workplace, working time, salary with its collective-agreement reference, start date and trial period. If the candidate does not read French, provide a translation — the French version governs, but a translated copy proves genuine consent and avoids later disputes about what was agreed. For a fixed-term contract (CDD, Contrat à Durée Déterminée), the written form and the precise legal ground are mandatory, and getting them wrong exposes you to reclassification as an open-ended contract with back-pay.

Then organize the monthly machinery, because in France paying a salary means operating a small compliance chain every month. Each payslip (bulletin de paie) must show a long list of mandatory mentions — gross salary, hours, contributions, net social, withholding tax — and errors on payslips are among the most common triggers of employee claims before the labour courts (conseil de prud’hommes, the elected court that hears employment disputes). Each month you also file the DSN (Déclaration Sociale Nominative, the single monthly online return that reports every employee’s pay data to URSSAF and the tax administration), and any DSN gap or mismatch is visible to the administration in real time. From day one you must also affiliate the employee to the company’s complémentaire santé (employer-funded top-up health insurance, mandatory for all private-sector employees with at least 50% of the cost borne by the employer), arrange the occupational-medicine follow-up (médecine du travail, whose prevention visit must occur within the first months), and enter the hire in the single personnel register (registre unique du personnel) kept at each workplace. None of this requires your physical presence in France: a payroll provider (prestataire de paie) or accountant (expert-comptable) with a mandate handles DPAE, DSN and payslips remotely, while you keep read access to every receipt. What the administration will never accept is the excuse of distance — “my founder lives abroad” explains nothing and justifies nothing.

One final checkpoint for candidates arriving from outside France: once the visa is issued by the consulate, the worker must validate it online and, depending on the permit, complete the OFII step (Office Français de l’Immigration et de l’Intégration, the agency in charge of reception, medical visit and integration of newcomers), including the medical examination and, where applicable, the integration contract. Tell your candidate in writing, before she books her flight, which steps remain after landing and who pays for what. A founder who maps this whole chain — ANEF filing, prefecture check, DPAE, contract, DSN, health cover, OFII — hires calmly. A founder who skips it discovers the second half of this article.

II. When the hire has already gone wrong: fines, back-pay and how to challenge from abroad

A. You let them start before the permit: the criminal, administrative and salary bills land together

The classic crisis call goes like this: the candidate started three weeks ago, the perfect profile, the team is delighted — and the work permit has still not arrived, or was never filed because “her card looked fine”. Under article L8251-1, quoted above, every day worked without the correct authorization is a fresh day of unlawful employment, and the law punishes the employer on three separate tracks that cumulate instead of cancelling each other out.

Track one is criminal. “Le fait pour toute personne, directement ou par personne interposée, d’embaucher, de conserver à son service ou d’employer pour quelque durée que ce soit un étranger non muni du titre l’autorisant à exercer une activité salariée en France, en méconnaissance de l’article L. 8251-1 , est puni d’un emprisonnement de cinq ans et d’une amende de 30 000 euros.” The fine applies per foreign worker concerned, knowingly using the services of an employer of unauthorized foreign labour carries the same punishment, and “Ces peines sont portées à un emprisonnement de dix ans et une amende de 200 000 euros lorsque l’infraction est commise en bande organisée.” Company directors face the same penalties in their own name alongside the company’s liability, with possible additional sanctions such as a ban on running a business or exclusion from public contracts for up to five years. There is exactly one statutory shelter, and it proves the value of the file described in section I: “Le premier alinéa n’est pas applicable à l’employeur qui, sur la base d’un titre frauduleux ou présenté frauduleusement par un étranger salarié, a procédé sans intention de participer à la fraude et sans connaissance de celle-ci à la déclaration auprès des organismes de sécurité sociale prévue à l’article L. 1221-10 , à la déclaration unique d’embauche et à la vérification auprès des administrations territorialement compétentes du titre autorisant cet étranger à exercer une activité salariée en France.” An employer who filed the DPAE and ran the prefecture check in good faith, then got fooled by a convincing forgery, escapes the criminal limb. An employer who filed nothing has no shelter at all.

Track two is administrative, and it hits faster because it needs no criminal trial. “Le ministre chargé de l’immigration prononce, au vu des procès-verbaux et des rapports qui lui sont transmis en application de l’ article L. 8271-17 , une amende administrative contre l’auteur d’un manquement aux articles L. 8251-1 et L. 8251-2 , sans préjudice des poursuites judiciaires pouvant être intentées à son encontre.” To set the amount, the minister weighs the employer’s financial capacity, the degree of intent, the seriousness of the negligence and the cost of removing the worker from French territory. “Le montant de l’amende est, au plus, égal à 5 000 fois le taux horaire du minimum garanti prévu à l’ article L. 3231-12 . Il peut être majoré en cas de réitération et est alors, au plus, égal à 15 000 fois ce même taux. L’amende est appliquée autant de fois qu’il y a d’étrangers concernés.” At current values that ceiling means up to 21,750 euros per worker, 65,250 euros per worker for a repeat offence within five years — reduced to 8,700 euros only for the employer who spontaneously pays all wages and allowances due within thirty days of the finding. The prefect can add a temporary closure of the establishment for up to three months or exclusion from public contracts for up to six months, and ignoring those orders is itself punished by two months in prison and a 3,750 euro fine. Falsifying documents to obtain a permit is punished separately by one year in prison and a 3,000 euro fine, so backdating a file after a control visit always makes things worse, never better.

Track three is the employee’s money, and it surprises founders the most: the worker employed without authorization keeps full wage rights and gains an automatic severance. “A défaut de preuve contraire, les sommes dues au salarié correspondent à une relation de travail présumée d’une durée de trois mois. Le salarié peut apporter par tous moyens la preuve du travail effectué” — so even undocumented weeks are presumed to total three months of pay unless you prove otherwise, while the employee may prove a longer period by any means, including messages, badges or witness statements. On top of wages, à une indemnité forfaitaire égale à trois mois de salaire, à moins que l’application des règles figurant aux articles L. 1234-5, L. 1234-9, L. 1243-4 et L. 1243-8 ou des stipulations contractuelles correspondantes ne conduise à une solution plus favorable.” In plain English: when the relationship ends, the foreign worker gets a lump sum of three months of salary, unless ordinary dismissal severance and notice rules give her more — in which case she gets the higher amount. The employer also pays to transfer unpaid wages to the country the worker left for or was returned to.

The Cour de cassation applied this mechanism strictly in a ruling dated 9 April 2026 that every foreign employer should know. A home childcarer hired in November 2021 and dismissed for gross misconduct in October 2024 claimed an advance on the lump sum before the labour court, and the dispute reached the supreme court on appeal number 25-12.603. The court restated the rule word for word: “l’étranger non muni du titre l’autorisant à exercer une activité salariée en France a droit, au titre de la période d’emploi illicite, en cas de rupture de la relation de travail, à une indemnité forfaitaire égale à trois mois de salaire” It then quashed the lower court’s order — not to deny the lump sum, but because the judges had granted it after noting a dismissal for gross misconduct without checking whether that misconduct was actually established: “sans rechercher si une telle faute, privative de l’indemnité forfaitaire prévue par l’article L. 8252-2 du code du travail, était caractérisée, le conseil de prud’hommes n’a pas donné de base légale à sa décision.” Two lessons for a founder running the company from abroad. First, dismissing the worker does not erase the three-month lump sum; only a proven gross misconduct can remove it, and the burden of proving that misconduct sits with you. Second, every fact must be documented — warnings, facts, dates, witnesses — because a labour court cannot simply assume misconduct from an irregular hiring situation. Keep in mind as well that if the irregular employment also qualifies as concealed work, the employee may instead claim the higher concealed-work lump sum: “Sont interdits : 1° Le travail totalement ou partiellement dissimulé, défini et exercé dans les conditions prévues aux articles L. 8221-3 et L. 8221-5”, and “En cas de rupture de la relation de travail, le salarié auquel un employeur a eu recours dans les conditions de l’article L. 8221-3 ou en commettant les faits prévus à l’article L. 8221-5 a droit à une indemnité forfaitaire égale à six mois de salaire.” Six months instead of three: that is the price of combining no permit with no DPAE and no payslips. URSSAF adds its own layer on the same facts, reassessing all unpaid contributions with an increase and withdrawing exemptions, which is why the social-security auditor is often the first visitor after a labour inspection.

B. The prefecture says no or says nothing: your appeal window and protecting the company from abroad

The second crisis is quieter but just as costly: you filed properly, the candidate is waiting abroad or already in France on another basis, and the answer is a refusal — or months of silence. French administrative law gives you a short, strict window: the official guidance states that within two months of the refusal you may file an administrative appeal (recours gracieux before the prefect, recours hiérarchique before the Minister of the Interior) or go directly to the administrative court (tribunal administratif), where a lawyer is not mandatory. Those two months run from notification of the refusal, they are a hard deadline, and missing them makes the refusal final. From abroad, the practical move is to have your file ready before the refusal even arrives: the ANEF filing receipt, the DREETS correspondence, the job description, the salary calculation against the SMIC and the collective agreement, evidence of recruitment efforts, and proof that the company is current on tax and social-security filings.

Choose the remedy that matches the reason for refusal. If the DREETS questioned the salary level, a revised contract at a higher salary with a new filing often succeeds faster than a court case — provided the increase is real and reflected in the DSN from the first payslip, because a fictitious top-up is fraud. If the refusal invokes the employment situation, reposition the file on the shortage-occupation list or document the unsuccessful search with dated evidence: job postings, applications received, reasons for rejection kept in writing. If the refusal targets the candidate’s profile rather than the job, consider whether another residence route fits — the talent card for qualified profiles, or a student part-time arrangement within the 964-hour ceiling — but never dress an employee relationship in a contractor or intern costume to bypass the refusal: reclassification brings the full employee back-pay plus the concealed-work six-month lump sum described above. And while any appeal runs, do not let the candidate work. Each day worked during the appeal is a new day of unlawful employment under article L8251-1, billed at the criminal, administrative and salary rates of section A, and it destroys the credibility of your appeal at the same time.

Silence requires the same discipline. Do not read administrative silence as permission: check the ANEF file status online, write to the DREETS for an update, and keep every exchange. If the delay threatens the hire, two parallel tracks protect you: prepare the two-month court appeal against an implicit refusal with counsel, and keep the candidate warm lawfully — a signed promise of employment (promesse d’embauche) conditional on obtaining the permit preserves the relationship without creating an employment relationship. Document everything from abroad in one chronological file: ANEF receipts, DREETS letters, prefecture verification replies, DPAE acknowledgement, contract, payslips, time records and correspondence with the candidate. Labour courts and administrative judges decide on papers, and a remote founder with a complete, dated, consistent file beats a local employer with a shoebox of approximations. That file is also what your accountant needs to compute the employer tax correctly, what URSSAF will ask for first in any audit, and what proves your good faith if a forged document ever surfaces. Distance is no defence in French employment law, but paperwork is.

Conclusion

Hiring a non-EU citizen for your French company while you live abroad is entirely possible — it is simply a procedure, not a handshake. Check the exact right-to-work attached to the candidate’s card, have the employer file the work permit on the ANEF portal for each new contract, verify the permit with the prefecture at least two working days before the start, file the nominative DPAE before day one, and run the monthly chain of payslips, DSN returns, top-up health cover and occupational-medicine follow-up. Price the one-off employer tax into the hire. If work has already started without authorization, stop the bleeding immediately: every additional day cumulates criminal exposure of five years and 30,000 euros per worker, an administrative fine of up to 21,750 euros per worker, and a three-month automatic lump sum for the employee — six months where concealed work is added. If the administration refuses, use the two-month appeal window with a file that answers the exact ground of refusal, and never let the candidate work during the appeal. Founders who master this sequence hire the talent they need and sleep well; the others discover that in France, the cheapest moment to handle immigration compliance is always before the first day of work.