Posting employees in France: simplification of the declaration is on the way

Moreover, at the start of the year France's labour inspectorate announced even more checks are to be performed on whether obligations relating to posted employees are being met. It is therefore of the utmost importance that these obligations receive the necessary attention. Penalties in the absence of certain information or documents can mount up considerably.

Preliminary declaration

The first obligation concerns preliminary declaration of the posting, also known as the ´SIPSI declaration'. This declaration is used for presenting certain information about the posting to the French labour inspectorate. This furthermore concerns other details on the company posting, the company receiving the service, the start and end date of the posting, the nature of the work to be performed and the location where the assigned is to be carried out, etc.
If employees are also posted to France, additional details must also be communicated to the inspectorate, namely the employee's personal details, information on the duties to be performed, the start and end date of the employee's activity in France, the working hours, break times, their residence during the posting, for instance.

Recent changes

As stated above, the information that must be included in the preliminary declaration, and that must be available to the labour inspectorate, is extremely extensive. A decree of 17 March 2023 provides for a number of relaxations, concerning both the preliminary declaration and the documents to be made available.

With the preliminary declaration, this specifically involves eliminating the following obligations:

• The nature of the equipment that each posted employee uses, as with the work processes;
• The times when the working day starts and ends, as with the times and duration of the posted employees' breaks;
• The rules for the travel and meal costs to be incurred and, if necessary, accommodation costs.

When it comes to the documents that must be available to the labour inspectorate, the following no longer applies:

• Any document revealing which law applies to the contract between the employer and the co-contractor based in France.
• Any document revealing the number of assignments performed and the employee's turnover in the country of origin and in French territory;

According to the text of the decree, these relaxations must be implemented by 1 July 2023 at the latest.

However, besides a relaxation, the new decree also provides for the possibility to impose an administrative penalty if the labour inspectorate ascertains an infringement of the declaration obligations. In this situation, the fine can amount to up to € 4,000 per employee posted. A fine of up to € 4,000 is also set for the absence of appointing a representative in France or a (translated) document, for each posted employee, and for each document missing. In the event the infringement is repeated within two years, the fine can be increased to € 8,000. The total of the fines can reach up to a maximum of € 500,000.

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