Earlier than the collapse of the French authorities final 12 months, a brand new immigration legislation was already deliberate for 2025. Now the French President Emmanuel Macron has introduced a brand new authorities, headed by newly named prime minister François Bayrou, we’re exploring this legislation under, together with one other immigration legislation that was handed early in 2024, and what the present standing of immigration legislation in France means for French companies.
Immigration underneath Macron
The earlier immigration legislation was truly handed three entire governments in the past, underneath the Borne authorities. As a serious manifesto dedication by President Emmanuel Macron, the legislation was one of many causes for the downfall of that authorities, and the appointment of the Attal authorities. The legislation was initially rejected by the Meeting, and despatched to a parliamentary committee, the place the provisions it contained have been truly strengthened earlier than being despatched again. This gained the approval of former Nationwide Rally chief Marine Le Pen, and it subsequently handed, coming into pressure in January 2024.
The 2024 legislation in its ultimate type made plenty of modifications regarding overseas staff. In addition to merging and renaming varied expertise visa or funding visa schemes, it additionally instituted a strict French language requirement, with completely different ranges of French language proficiency required for several types of visa. For the newly created medical personnel visa, for example, a excessive stage of French proficiency can be required, one thing that employers are inspired to contribute to.
Importantly, the burden of visa utility and renewal for overseas staff (i.e. these from exterior the EU and EEA) in search of a brief residence allow has been shifted from employers to the employees themselves. Workers seeking to safe a brand new, non permanent one-year visa should now have been:
● Working in a discipline deemed as dealing with a labour scarcity for no less than 12 of the previous 24 months
● Be working in one in all these fields on the time of utility; and
● Have proof of no less than three years of uninterrupted residence in France previous to their utility.
These visa functions even have ‘comfortable’ necessities which can be thought-about by the prefects authorising them. These embrace:
● How they and their households have built-in with French society
● Their ‘respect for public order’
● Not having dedicated any crimes
● How they’ve built-in into their French enterprise; and
● Their adherence to French life, values and enterprise tradition.
Whereas there are different visa alternatives for buyers or individuals in particular fields, this legislation successfully blocks entry to non permanent one-year residence permits for a big subset of overseas staff in the event that they weren’t already dwelling in France for an uninterrupted three-year interval. Their means to proceed to stay in France can be contingent on there being a unbroken scarcity of staff of their discipline, assuming that they don’t meet the standards for an additional visa sort or to use for citizenship.
The place companies have been beforehand liable for arranging work visas, the monetary penalty for using anybody with out an applicable visa has elevated. They have to now pay 30,000 euros for every worker and not using a visa—double the earlier tremendous—and a 200,000 euro tremendous for mass employment of a body of workers with out visas. On this method, the executive burden for companies has shifted from the precise value of visa functions to the potential value of noncompliance.
French immigration legislation in 2025
The brand new immigration legislation proposed underneath the earlier short-lived prime minster Michel Barnier can be an extension of those modifications, and was extensively seen as an extra concession to the rising affect of the far-right. The headline change that was leaked from the proposal is the flexibility to detain undocumented migrants for longer durations of time, permitting their standing to be investigated extra totally, and doubtlessly rising the variety of deportations.
Barnier additionally prompt that the availability of visas could also be conditional on the variety of individuals France was in a position to deport, and the velocity at which this might happen. It will be contingent on different international locations to offer the paperwork for undocumented migrants in order that France may course of them extra rapidly, thus releasing up immigration ‘capability’ for documented migrants to enter the nation.
The transfer to tighten up French immigration legal guidelines even additional comes amidst a local weather of comparable legal guidelines round Europe. This consists of the EU’s personal Pact on Migration and Asylum, which was handed amidst some controversy in mid-2024 and as a result of come into impact in 2026. This included a set of modifications designed to unify the strategy to migration and asylum throughout the bloc, together with a mixed asylum database, constant processes for screening, processing and returns, and a solidarity framework, amongst others.
What impression will these modifications have?
As with many immigration legal guidelines, the political and human impression of those modifications will possible be higher than the tangible impact on companies. Whereas it’s true that the mixed legal guidelines will act to restrict non permanent residence permits for non-EU staff, this solely applies to short-term visas for expert professions, and never the myriad different varieties of visa which nonetheless exist. French firms can nonetheless profit from a spread of longer-term visa choices for expertise, together with the French Tech visa, the ‘expertise residence allow’, salarié détaché ICT for department managers, medical skilled visa, and different everlasting worker visas.
Importantly, French firms additionally proceed to profit from the surfeit of expertise inside the European Union, together with tens of millions of potential workers who can freely transfer to and work in France. That is alongside the wealth of expertise inside France, stemming from its vary of world-class educational establishments, and the numerous industries wherein it specialises, from precision engineering and manufacturing to its rising tech trade. As such, any shortfall in expertise is unlikely—and would in all probability be addressed rapidly by politicians have been it to happen.
The French political panorama can be fascinating compared to different main European and international economies. Whereas the recognition of the Nationwide Rally could also be regarding on the subject of financial and social stability, France additionally has a a lot stronger and extra unified opposition to the occasion than exists in lots of different international locations. As such, the possibility of a powerful majority authorities being fashioned by Nationwide Rally is pretty low, that means that the established order will in all probability be preserved for some years to come back. Any additional immigration legal guidelines are more likely to be extra for present than something which might dramatically impression French companies.
The most recent shifts in authorities (and the immigration legal guidelines these have led to) symbolize jockeying for energy and management, greater than they symbolize any radical shift in coverage or public sentiment. Whereas additional modifications to immigration legislation can hardly be dominated out, it’s pretty protected to say that the impression on French companies will probably be much less dramatic than the rhetoric round these legal guidelines would recommend. For extra details about French visas, contact us on 0033 (0) 1 53 57 49 10.
