Taking on staff is a critical phase of the employer/employee relationship under French Law.
The employer is required to take a number of important decisions upon employment which would have an impact on the employment relationship of the parties thereafter.
When employing a person in France, the employer has to decide whether the person should be employed under an open-term contract (in French “contrat à durée indéterminée – CDI”) or under a fixed-term contract (in French “contrat à durée déterminée – CDD”) or under a full-time contract or under a part-time contract.
In addition, French Law now provides for the possibility of agreeing open-term contracts for specific projects (in French “CDI de chantier ou d’opération”). Initially, this was limited to the sector of public works and construction sites but now it should be possible to agree such a contract in wider fields such as IT, banks, the automobile sector provided there is an extended agreement in this respect within the framework of the applicable collective bargaining agreement or within specific sectors where it is of customary practice to have recourse to such a contract notably the building and public works industry.
It should be noted that an open-term agreement constitutes the general norm in France. Any person employed in order to perform the permanent normal activities of a company should, subject to few exceptions, be employed under an open-term contract. Indeed, the circumstances in which a fixed-term contract would be permitted are strictly limited by law.