Economic dismissals: voidness widened to new birth leave, three remedies

An employee dismissed for economic reasons can challenge the motive or the procedure before the conseil de prud'hommes, and the judge's answer falls into three different buckets: the dismissal is void (nul), unjustified (sans cause réelle et sérieuse, also called abusif), or merely irregularService Public. The letter sent to the employee must state the economic motive, and the consequences run from reinstatement to scale damages depending on the bucket.

A dismissal is void where the law prohibits it. Alongside discrimination, breaches of fundamental freedoms, jury service, whistleblowing, legal actions on discrimination or gender equality, moral or sexual harassment, maternity and paternity protections, work accidents, protected-employee status, strikes and the protections around a child's death, the list now also covers dismissals that disregard the protection tied to the congé supplémentaire de naissanceService Public — the extra birth leave of one or two months that suspends the contract after maternity, paternity or adoption leave for children born or arriving from 1 January 2026Service Public. Voidness also follows missing or refused validation or homologation of the employment-saving plan (PSE), or its annulment for an absent or insufficient plan, except in redressement or liquidation judiciaire. Where the plan's approval is annulled only for thin reasoning, the Dreets issues a fresh reasoned decision within fifteen days and neither reinstatement nor employer indemnity follows.

A voided employee can demand reinstatement unless it has become impossible, such as the site closing or no job remaining, and a reinstated employee repays the sums received at dismissal. Failing reinstatement, damages depend on the ground: no validation decision or a Dreets refusal brings prejudice-based damages below eleven employees or two years' service and at least six months' pay, uncapped, at or above both thresholds; other annulment grounds bring at least six months' pay with no seniority condition, on top of statutory severance.

An unjustified dismissal — the judge rejects the economic motive — is defined in a new question-and-answer on the page. Reinstatement then needs both the judge's proposal and the agreement of employer and employee, with acquired advantages kept. Without reinstatement the judge awards an employer-paid scale indemnity set by company size and seniority at the date the dismissal letter was sent, readable on the official simulator and combinable with statutory severance within the scale's ceiling.

A dismissal can be irregular yet justified: the procedure was breached, for example no mandatory prior interview, without killing a real and serious cause. Missing a mandatory comité social et économique, or failing to draw up the procès-verbal de carence, makes an economic dismissal procedure irregular, and pure irregularity never reinstates. Compensation then turns on justification: an unjustified dismissal draws only the unjustified-dismissal indemnity, while a justified one draws an employer-paid irregularity indemnity set by the judge.

Legal basis is articles L. 1235-10 and L. 1235-11 of the Code du travail on void economic procedures and their sanction, article L. 1235-3-1 on the six-month minimum for listed nullities, article L. 1235-15 on the irregularity of a procedure without a mandatory comité social et économique, and articles L. 1225-46-2 to L. 1225-46-7 on the congé supplémentaire de naissance.