New rules on senior employees and women on boards
Published on :
23/10/2025
23
October
Oct
10
2025
On October 15th, 2025, the French Parliament adopted a law extending existing national collective agreements concerning senior employees to all companies. This law namely provides that companies with over 300 employees will have to engage in collective bargaining every 3 years on this specific topic which will at a minimum cover the hiring of staff aged over 45, the continued employment of such staff and pre-retirement measures and the transfer of know-how.
The current mandatory mid-career meeting which needs to be organised within 2 months after the mandatory mi-career health check is reinforced to cover a full review of the employee’s professional wishes and expectations namely with regards training and mobility.
This is also the case of the end-of-career meeting to be organised in the 2 years preceding the employee’s 60th birthday. It should be noted that the law does not provide for any sanction should the company fail to organise such mid-career and end-of-career meetings. However, not organising such meetings could be considered a breach of the company’s health and safety obligations allowing employees to claim damages should they suffer harm due to such meetings not being organised.
On July 30th, 2025, a decree was adopted to finalise the transposition of the EU Women on Boards Directive within French law. France was already mostly compliant since the 2011 Copé-Zimmerman law. This decree however ensures that the rule according to which at least 40% of Board members must be of a different gender now also applies to the employee representatives which must be nominated to the Board.
This will take effect in phased-in stages between January 2026 and 2027. For memory, the requirement to nominate employees’ representatives to the Board applies for companies or parent-companies based in France with over 1000 employees and to French companies whose parent-companies are based in France or abroad if they have in total over 5000 employees.
History
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INFORMATION TO BE GIVEN TO EMPLOYEES ON THE OCCASION OF HIRING AND ON SECONDMENT ABROAD / NAVIGATING PARIS OLYMPICS RESTRICTIONS
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