{"id":2118456,"date":"2026-09-09T15:55:44","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T13:55:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kohenavocats.fr\/2026\/09\/09\/foreign-company-sends-staff-france-sipsi-a1-inspection-fix\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T15:55:44","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T13:55:44","slug":"foreign-company-sends-staff-france-sipsi-a1-inspection-fix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kohenavocats.fr\/en\/2026\/09\/09\/foreign-company-sends-staff-france-sipsi-a1-inspection-fix\/","title":{"rendered":"Your Foreign Company Sends Staff to Work in France: the SIPSI Posting Declaration, the A1 Certificate and How to Survive a Labour Inspection"},"content":{"rendered":"

You run a company in London, New York, Warsaw or Dubai, and next month three of your people start work on a French site, in a Paris office or at a client’s factory near Lyon. Your payroll provider tells you everything is in order because the team stays on home-country contracts and carries A1 certificates. Then a labour inspector walks onto the site and asks, in French, for the SIPSI declaration receipt, the name of your representative in France and the pay records translated into French. Within weeks, a fine of several thousand euros per worker lands on your desk, your French client receives a letter of its own, and URSSAF \u2014 the French body that collects social-security contributions (Unions de recouvrement des cotisations de s\u00e9curit\u00e9 sociale et d’allocations familiales) \u2014 opens a file asking why no French contributions were ever declared. This scenario plays out every week: sending staff to France is legally a posting of workers, known in French as d\u00e9tachement, and it triggers a full set of prior declarations, a local representative, French minimum pay and hours rules, and a strict proof system for social security. The good news is that each of these obligations can be fixed, even after an inspection has started, if you move fast and produce the right documents. This guide explains what a foreign company must file before day one, which French employment rules apply to posted staff, what a missing SIPSI declaration or a missing A1 really costs, and how to answer the inspector and URSSAF from abroad. Our companion hub for foreign founders setting up a French presence, covering bank account, Kbis extract, VAT and first hires, is Setting Up a Company in France as a Foreign Founder<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I. Your Employee Sent to France Is a Posted Worker: the SIPSI Declaration, the Local Representative and the Papers Inspectors Demand<\/h2>\n

French law starts from a simple principle: an employer based outside France may send employees to work temporarily on French soil only if a genuine employment contract ties the worker to that employer and the employment relationship continues throughout the posting. The statute states it plainly: \u201cUn employeur \u00e9tabli hors de France peut d\u00e9tacher temporairement des salari\u00e9s sur le territoire national, \u00e0 condition qu’il existe un contrat de travail entre cet employeur et le salari\u00e9 et que leur relation de travail subsiste pendant la p\u00e9riode de d\u00e9tachement.\u201d<\/a> The same article lists the three classic patterns: work performed for the employer’s own account under its direction within a contract signed with a recipient established or operating in France, movement between establishments of the same company or group, and work performed for the employer’s own account with no French recipient at all. Agency work has its own parallel provision for temporary-work businesses in article L. 1262-2 of the Labour Code<\/a>, and the whole posting title applies subject to international treaties and EU rules under article L. 1261-1<\/a>. In practice, almost every cross-border assignment your company organises \u2014 installing equipment, auditing a subsidiary, staffing a French project for a client \u2014 falls inside this definition, including intra-group secondments that managers often wrongly treat as internal travel. Once the definition bites, two families of duties follow: administrative duties toward the French labour administration, and substantive French employment standards for the posted team.<\/p>\n

A. How to File the Prior SIPSI Declaration and Appoint Your Representative in France<\/h3>\n

Before the first posted worker sets foot on the French site, the foreign employer must file a prior posting declaration through SIPSI, the online system for international service provision (Syst\u00e8me d’information sur les prestations de services internationales) run by the Ministry of Labour, addressed to the inspection du travail \u2014 the labour inspectorate \u2014 of the place where the work starts. The governing text, article L. 1262-2-1 of the Labour Code<\/a>, provides: \u201cL’employeur qui d\u00e9tache un ou plusieurs salari\u00e9s, dans les conditions pr\u00e9vues aux 1\u00b0 et 2\u00b0 de l’article L. 1262-1 et \u00e0 l’article L. 1262-2, adresse une d\u00e9claration, pr\u00e9alablement au d\u00e9tachement, \u00e0 l’inspection du travail du lieu o\u00f9 d\u00e9bute la prestation.\u201d The declaration identifies your company, the French place of work, the posted workers, the dates and hours, the nature of the service and the applicable collective agreement, and it must be renewed or updated whenever the assignment changes. The administration’s guidance on this prior declaration is published on the Ministry of Labour’s SIPSI pages at travail-emploi.gouv.fr<\/a>, which walk employers through the online filing. Filing late or not at all is the single most common finding on French construction sites, logistics platforms and IT projects staffed from abroad, and inspectors check it first because the SIPSI database tells them in seconds whether your posting exists.<\/p>\n

The second prior duty is to appoint a representative of your company on French soil. The same article continues: \u201cL’employeur mentionn\u00e9 au I du pr\u00e9sent article d\u00e9signe un repr\u00e9sentant de l’entreprise sur le territoire national, charg\u00e9 d’assurer la liaison avec les agents mentionn\u00e9s \u00e0 l’article L. 8271-1-2 pendant la dur\u00e9e de la prestation.\u201d This repr\u00e9sentant is not a figurehead: it is the person the inspector calls, visits and serves papers on, and who must be able to produce the file on demand throughout the assignment. Foreign groups typically appoint their French subsidiary’s manager, their French lawyer, or a specialised posting representative; what matters is a real person, reachable at a French address, holding a written appointment letter and a complete set of documents. The statute warns that ticking these boxes proves nothing by itself \u2014 \u201cL’accomplissement des obligations mentionn\u00e9es aux I et II du pr\u00e9sent article ne pr\u00e9sume pas du caract\u00e8re r\u00e9gulier du d\u00e9tachement\u201d \u2014 so a SIPSI receipt plus a representative never whitewashes a sham arrangement, but without them every inspection starts badly.<\/p>\n

The third practical duty is to keep translated documents available where the work is performed. Article L. 1263-7 of the Labour Code<\/a> requires: \u201cL’employeur d\u00e9tachant temporairement des salari\u00e9s sur le territoire national, ou son repr\u00e9sentant mentionn\u00e9 au II de l’article L. 1262-2-1, pr\u00e9sente sur le lieu de r\u00e9alisation de la prestation \u00e0 l’inspection du travail des documents traduits en langue fran\u00e7aise permettant de v\u00e9rifier le respect des dispositions du pr\u00e9sent titre.\u201d Concretely, the inspector expects the SIPSI receipt, the A1 certificates, employment contracts, pay slips (bulletins de paie), time records, proof of working-time compliance and the appointment letter of the representative, all in French or with a French translation. Payslips in English only, time sheets kept on a server in Texas that nobody on site can open, or A1 forms \u201cavailable on request from head office within two weeks\u201d are treated as missing documents. Build one posting file per assignment \u2014 paper or immediately printable on site \u2014 before the team travels, and brief the site supervisor that the inspector may arrive unannounced and will ask for it first.<\/p>\n

Foreign companies that send staff to a French client face one more trap: the client’s own duties. When a French customer \u2014 the donneur d’ordre (contracting party) or ma\u00eetre d’ouvrage (project owner) \u2014 hires a service provider that posts workers, it must check before the posting starts that the provider completed the SIPSI declaration and appointed a representative. Article L. 1262-4-1 of the Labour Code<\/a> states: \u201cLe donneur d’ordre ou le ma\u00eetre d’ouvrage qui contracte avec un prestataire de services qui d\u00e9tache des salari\u00e9s, dans les conditions mentionn\u00e9es aux articles L. 1262-1 et L. 1262-2, v\u00e9rifie aupr\u00e8s de ce dernier, avant le d\u00e9but du d\u00e9tachement, qu’il s’est acquitt\u00e9 des obligations mentionn\u00e9es aux I et II de l’article L. 1262-2-1.\u201d If the provider never handed over a copy of the declaration, the client must itself file a declaration with the inspectorate within forty-eight hours of the posting’s start. This is why experienced French buyers now demand the SIPSI receipt and the representative’s details in the contract before your team boards the plane: your missing paperwork exposes them to a fine of their own, and they know it. Offer these documents spontaneously with your bid and you remove a frequent reason French prospects hesitate to sign with a foreign provider.<\/p>\n

B. Which French Pay, Hours and Safety Rules Apply From Day One and What the A1 Certificate Proves<\/h3>\n

Posted workers remain employed by you, yet while they work in France they benefit from a protective core of French employment law, the so-called noyau dur. Article L. 1262-4 of the Labour Code<\/a> guarantees the posted employee \u201cl’\u00e9galit\u00e9 de traitement avec les salari\u00e9s employ\u00e9s par les entreprises de la m\u00eame branche d’activit\u00e9 \u00e9tablies sur le territoire national,\u201d equal treatment with employees of same-sector companies established in France, across a closed list of subjects: individual and collective freedoms at work, discrimination and gender equality, maternity and parental leave, temporary-work safeguards, the right to strike, working time, compensatory rest, public holidays, paid annual leave and night work of young workers, holiday-fund membership, pay within the meaning of article L. 3221-3 including overtime uplifts, health and safety, minimum working age and youth employment, illegal-work prohibitions, and \u2014 for longer postings \u2014 further guarantees the article details. The decisive question for your budget is pay: every posted worker must receive at least the French statutory minimum wage, the SMIC (Salaire minimum interprofessionnel de croissance), plus the minimum rates of the French sector collective agreement (convention collective) covering the activity performed in France, including overtime uplifts, Sunday and night premiums, holiday pay accrual of ten percent for fixed-term style top-ups where applicable, and allowances the agreement treats as salary. A Polish, Romanian or American salary that is perfectly lawful at home becomes unlawful the day it falls below the French sector minimum for the same job, and the shortfall is recovered as back pay with interest.<\/p>\n

Working time is the second shock for foreign employers. France caps the standard week at thirty-five hours, requires premium pay for overtime, limits daily and weekly hours, mandates daily and weekly rest, and restricts night work \u2014 and these caps apply to your posted team from the first day, whatever home-country contracts say. Keep French-style time records for every posted worker, make sure the site enforces rest breaks, and check the applicable convention collective for sector caps that can be stricter than the statute. Health and safety duties apply in full as well: risk assessment for the French site, safety instructions in a language the workers understand, protective equipment, accident reporting to the French system, and for construction and high-risk work the coordination and site-welfare rules your French client will impose. An accident involving a posted worker without French-compliant safety documentation turns a workers’-compensation file into a criminal-risk file, so treat safety paperwork as part of the posting file, not as an afterthought.<\/p>\n

Social security is where the A1 certificate enters. Under the EU coordination rules \u2014 Regulation (EC) No 883\/2004 on the coordination of social security systems \u2014 a worker genuinely posted to another Member State stays covered by the home state’s social-security scheme, and the home institution certifies this with the portable document A1 (formerly E101). The A1 is therefore the only paper that lets you answer URSSAF’s first question: why were no French contributions declared for people working on French soil? The Cour de cassation confirmed the mechanism in a published ruling of 16 October 2025, appeal No. 23-14.039, holding that where posted workers were never declared to the French institutions, \u201cil appartient \u00e0 l’employeur de prouver que la l\u00e9gislation fran\u00e7aise n’est pas applicable \u00e0 ces salari\u00e9s en fournissant \u00e0 l’organisme charg\u00e9 du recouvrement des cotisations de s\u00e9curit\u00e9 sociale le formulaire A1, anciennement E101, prouvant leur assujettissement \u00e0 la l\u00e9gislation de leur pays d’origine,\u201d and that failing that proof, the company faces reassessment for concealed work \u2014 full text on L\u00e9gifrance (Cass. 2e civ., 16 Oct. 2025, No. 23-14.039, published in the Bulletin)<\/a>. Get A1 certificates issued by your home institution before departure, check every name, date and French place of work on each form, and carry them in the site file: an A1 applied for after the inspection starts is better than none, but an A1 already on site ends the argument immediately. URSSAF’s own pages for foreign employers on international mobility at urssaf.fr<\/a> describe the same expectation from the collector’s side.<\/p>\n

One warning closes this picture: a valid-looking A1 does not protect a sham. The criminal chamber of the Cour de cassation ruled on 2 March 2021, appeal No. 19-80.991, that concealed-work offences \u201cpeuvent \u00eatre \u00e9tablis, nonobstant la production de certificats E101 ou A1, lorsque les obligations d\u00e9claratives qui ont \u00e9t\u00e9 omises ne sont pas seulement celles aff\u00e9rentes aux organismes de protection sociale (article L. 8221-3, 2\u00b0, du code du travail) ou aux salaires ou aux cotisations sociales (article L. 8221-5, 3\u00b0, du code du travail),\u201d giving as examples a missing registration with the trade-and-companies register (registre du commerce et des soci\u00e9t\u00e9s, the RCS \u2014 the French company register that issues the Kbis extract) for concealment by hidden activity, or missing pay slips for concealment of employees \u2014 see L\u00e9gifrance (Cass. crim., 2 Mar. 2021, No. 19-80.991, published in the Bulletin)<\/a>. The ruling relays the Court of Justice of the European Union’s Bouygues judgment of 14 May 2020, case C-17\/19<\/a>, that posting certificates \u201cs’imposent aux juridictions de l’Etat sur le territoire duquel les travailleurs exercent leurs activit\u00e9s uniquement en mati\u00e8re de s\u00e9curit\u00e9 sociale\u201d \u2014 they bind the host state’s courts only for social-security purposes. In that case the managers were convicted of concealed work, unlawful lending of labour, forgery and misuse of corporate assets, with suspended prison terms, 45,000-euro fines, five-year professional bans and confiscations. The lesson for honest companies is symmetrical: genuine postings with real A1 certificates, real SIPSI filings and real French pay have nothing to fear, while letterbox arrangements with home-state activity limited to internal or administrative management fall under article L. 8221-3, 3\u00b0 of the Labour Code<\/a>, which expressly treats as concealed work \u201cs’est pr\u00e9value des dispositions applicables au d\u00e9tachement de salari\u00e9s lorsque l’employeur de ces derniers exerce dans l’Etat sur le territoire duquel il est \u00e9tabli des activit\u00e9s relevant uniquement de la gestion interne ou administrative, ou lorsque son activit\u00e9 est r\u00e9alis\u00e9e sur le territoire national de fa\u00e7on habituelle, stable et continue.\u201d If your French operations are permanent and continuous, stop posting and hire or incorporate instead \u2014 our hub article above explains the subsidiary route.<\/p>\n

II. Your Posting Is Challenged in France: the Labour Inspector’s Fine, the URSSAF Bill and How a Foreign Company Fights Back From Abroad<\/h2>\n

Most foreign employers discover French posting law through an inspection, not through a textbook. The visit usually starts quietly: an inspector (inspecteur du travail) arrives on site, notes the foreign number plates on the vans, interviews two or three workers, photographs the notice board and asks the site supervisor for the SIPSI receipt, the representative’s details and the French-translated file. If the answers are vague, the inspector returns with colleagues, extends the visit to pay and hours records, and sends a formal letter listing the breaches found. From that letter, three bills can follow in parallel: an administrative fine for the missing declaration, a separate fine for your French client, and a social-security reassessment for unpaid French contributions \u2014 each with its own procedure, deadline and judge. Understanding the three tracks is what lets you respond in the right order instead of answering everything with one confused letter.<\/p>\n

A. How Much a Missing SIPSI or A1 Costs: 4,000 Euros Per Worker, Client Fines and the Contribution Reassessment<\/h3>\n

The employer’s fine is automatic in structure and painful in amount. Article L. 1264-1 of the Labour Code<\/a> provides: \u201cLa m\u00e9connaissance par l’employeur qui d\u00e9tache un ou plusieurs salari\u00e9s d’une des obligations mentionn\u00e9es \u00e0 l’article L. 1262-2-1, au troisi\u00e8me alin\u00e9a du II de l’article L. 1262-4, \u00e0 l’article L. 1262-4-4 ou \u00e0 l’article L. 1263-7 est passible d’une amende administrative, dans les conditions pr\u00e9vues \u00e0 l’article L. 1264-3.\u201d Every missing piece \u2014 no SIPSI declaration, no appointed representative, missing documents on site \u2014 is a separate breach, and the pricing is set by article L. 1264-3<\/a>: \u201cLe montant de l’amende est d’au plus 4 000 \u20ac par salari\u00e9 d\u00e9tach\u00e9 et d’au plus 8 000 \u20ac en cas de r\u00e9it\u00e9ration dans un d\u00e9lai de deux ans \u00e0 compter du jour de la notification de la premi\u00e8re amende. Le montant total de l’amende ne peut \u00eatre sup\u00e9rieur \u00e0 500 000 \u20ac.\u201d Five posted workers with no declaration therefore expose you to up to 20,000 euros on a first finding, doubled on a repeat finding within two years, within an overall cap of half a million. The authority must weigh \u201cles circonstances et la gravit\u00e9 du manquement, le comportement de son auteur, notamment sa bonne foi, ainsi que ses ressources et ses charges,\u201d so a first-time omission by a company that regularises immediately pays far less than a repeat player that ignores the inspector \u2014 but the starting arithmetic concentrates minds. The administration has two full years from the breach to act \u2014 \u201cLe d\u00e9lai de prescription de l’action de l’administration pour la sanction du manquement par une amende administrative est de deux ann\u00e9es r\u00e9volues \u00e0 compter du jour o\u00f9 le manquement a \u00e9t\u00e9 commis\u201d \u2014 and the fine is collected like other State debts, with no suspensive effect for challenges to enforcement: \u201cL’amende est recouvr\u00e9e comme les cr\u00e9ances de l’Etat \u00e9trang\u00e8res \u00e0 l’imp\u00f4t et au domaine. L’opposition \u00e0 l’ex\u00e9cution ou l’opposition aux poursuites n’a pas pour effet de suspendre l’action en recouvrement de la cr\u00e9ance.\u201d Paying late adds surcharges, so never treat the fine notice as a letter you can answer next quarter.<\/p>\n

Your French client is fined on a parallel track, which is why it will pressure you the moment it is notified. Article L. 1264-2 of the Labour Code<\/a> makes the project owner, contracting party or user company liable to the same administrative fine where its contractor missed the SIPSI duties and the client failed its verification duty, skipped its own 48-hour declaration, or breached related information duties. In practice the inspector notifies the client, the client invokes the warranty and indemnity clauses of your service contract, and you end up reimbursing the client’s fine on top of your own unless your contract caps that pass-through. Review your French service agreements now: add a clause in which you warrant that SIPSI filings and A1 certificates are in place before mobilisation, undertake to deliver copies on demand, and accept a defined indemnity \u2014 and mirror it with a clause requiring the client to forward any inspection letter to you within days, because its deadlines run even while the letter sits in its mailroom.<\/p>\n

The third track is social security, and it is usually the most expensive. Where posted workers were never declared in France and no valid A1 proves home-state cover, URSSAF treats the French pay as a concealed payroll and reassesses contributions on the entire amount, using the general contribution base of article L. 242-1 of the Social Security Code<\/a>, which subjects all sums paid in consideration or on the occasion of work to contributions. The sequence follows the standard collection ritual: control, letter of observations (lettre d’observations) inviting your comments, formal demand (mise en demeure), then an enforceable order (contrainte) served for collection. The 16 October 2025 ruling described above shows exactly how this ends when the employer cannot produce A1 forms: the reassessment stands, and the Cour de cassation quashed the appeal judgment that had cancelled the letter of observations and the demand \u2014 \u201cCASSE ET ANNULE, en toutes ses dispositions, l’arr\u00eat rendu le 9 f\u00e9vrier 2023\u201d \u2014 sending the case back to the Metz appeal court and ordering the company to pay 3,000 euros under article 700 of the Code of Civil Procedure. Add back pay owed to underpaid workers, the client’s indemnity claim and your own legal costs, and a six-month posting of a five-person team can easily cost more than the margin on the French contract. That is the commercial reason to fix the file before URSSAF prices it for you.<\/p>\n

B. How to Answer the Inspector and URSSAF Within the Deadline and Fix Your File Without Flying to Paris<\/h3>\n

When the inspector’s letter arrives, work in this order. First, diary every deadline the same day: the fine procedure gives you a short window to submit written observations before the authority fixes the amount, and the statute sends any challenge to the administrative court with no hierarchical appeal \u2014 \u201cL’employeur, le ma\u00eetre d’ouvrage ou le donneur d’ordre peut contester la d\u00e9cision de l’administration devant le tribunal administratif, \u00e0 l’exclusion de tout recours hi\u00e9rarchique.\u201d A lawyer in Paris or in the region of the site can file and plead for you; neither the observations nor the court appeal require your directors to travel. Second, appoint the French representative immediately if none exists, file or correct the SIPSI declarations for the ongoing posting, and assemble the translated site file described in part I \u2014 SIPSI receipts, A1 certificates, contracts, pay slips, time records and the appointment letter. Third, write to the inspector through counsel admitting nothing about intent, showing the fresh filings, documenting good faith \u2014 first posting, immediate correction, language difficulties now solved by a representative \u2014 and asking the authority to weigh those circumstances as article L. 1264-3 requires. Inspectors and fining authorities reduce penalties for companies that visibly come into compliance; they increase them for companies that argue the law does not apply to foreigners. If the site is in Paris or anywhere in \u00cele-de-France, the file is handled by the Paris labour inspectorate and the DREETS \u00cele-de-France (Direction r\u00e9gionale de l’\u00e9conomie, de l’emploi, du travail et des solidarit\u00e9s \u2014 the regional state service for labour matters), which process a high volume of posting files and expect a professionally presented response in French; an English-only reply from head office with no representative is the fastest route to the maximum.<\/p>\n

Answer URSSAF on its own separate track, with the same discipline. Reply to the letter of observations within the stated deadline, worker by worker: produce each A1 with its issue date and coverage period, reconcile every payslip with the declared home-state base, and explain each gap \u2014 a worker who joined mid-project, a certificate renewed late, a name misspelt on the form \u2014 with dated proof. Challenge the mise en demeure and any contrainte before the correct judge within the deadline printed on each document, and never let an enforceable order become final through inattention while you negotiate informally with the controller. Where A1 certificates are missing, ask your home institution for them at once and, in parallel, prepare the fallback: voluntary disclosure of the French payroll with payment of the contributions reduces penalties and ends the concealed-work characterisation far more cheaply than a reassessment imposed after a fight. Keep the two disputes consistent \u2014 the story you tell the inspector and the story you tell URSSAF must match on dates, headcount, hours and pay, because both administrations read each other’s files.<\/p>\n

Finally, close the file structurally so the next posting starts clean. Calendar the two-year repeat window from any first fine, because a second breach within two years doubles the per-worker ceiling to 8,000 euros. Renegotiate the French client’s contract with the warranty, document-delivery and letter-forwarding clauses described above. Decide honestly whether the activity is still temporary posting or has become permanent French operations: teams present \u201cde fa\u00e7on habituelle, stable et continue,\u201d in the words of article L. 8221-3, 3\u00b0, must move to French hiring or a French subsidiary rather than a new round of SIPSI filings. And keep one standing posting kit at head-office level \u2014 template SIPSI data, representative appointment letter, translation checklist, A1 request procedure, time-record model and the applicable convention collective minima \u2014 so each new assignment files before departure instead of after the inspector’s visit.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\n

Sending your own people to work in France is not business travel: it is a posting that French law surrounds with prior declarations, a local representative, translated site documents, French minimum pay and hours, and A1-backed social-security proof. The SIPSI filing and the representative cost little and take days; the fine for skipping them runs to 4,000 euros per worker, your French client is fined alongside you, and URSSAF reassesses the whole payroll where no valid A1 justifies the absence of French contributions \u2014 with the Cour de cassation backing controllers who demand posting documents and quashing judgments that cancel their reassessments. The two 2025 and 2021 rulings discussed here draw a clear line: genuine postings, documented before departure and paid at French rates, survive inspections and court review, while sham arrangements fail even behind stacks of A1 forms. File early, pay French rates, keep the translated file on site, and answer every letter within its deadline through French counsel. Handled that way, a posting inspection becomes an administrative formality instead of the most expensive lesson of your French expansion.<\/p>\n

Need a quick opinion on your case.<\/h2>\n

Our Paris firm advises foreign companies on French postings, inspections and URSSAF disputes every week. Call +33 6 46 60 58 22<\/a> for a telephone consultation within 48 hours with a lawyer of the firm, or write via our contact page<\/a>. We act throughout Paris and \u00cele-de-France, before the inspectorate, URSSAF and the courts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Posting staff to France triggers SIPSI declaration, a local representative, French pay rules and A1 proof. Fines reach 4,000 euros per worker plus URSSAF reassessment. 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