The New Hiring Contract

The Contrat Nouvelles Embauches or "New Hiring Contract" (the "CNE") represents a revolution in the world of French employment contracts.

Indeed, the U.S. law rule of "at will-employment"¹, which allows employee discharge for no reason, was not a familiar notion in French law until an ordinance of August 2, 2005 (the "Ordinance"²) created the CNE, which is a type of indefinite-term employment contract under which the employee is more or less "employed at will" for the first two years.

The general rule under French employment law remains that anyone is entitled to be hired under an indefinite-term employment contract, which, after a fairly short trial period (no more than six months), cannot be terminated by the employer without "real and serious" cause and due process.