Employees on sick leave will be entitled to four weeks of paid leave

In France, the Labor Code does not provide for paid leave during non-professional sick leave. But that should change soon. In its conclusion, announced on Wednesday, the Council of State called on the government to respect European legislation, which provides the opposite: “Workers must receive sick leave, regardless of the origin of the disease (occupational or not),” the newspaper writes. supreme administrative court.

However, they must be limited to four weeks per year, while the minimum duration of paid leave is five weeks per year in France and four in Europe. “The legislator is not obliged, in order to ensure the conformity of French legislation with the Constitution and the laws of the European Union, to give periods of absence due to illness the same effect of acquiring holiday rights as periods of effective work,” the Council of State clarifies.

In his opinion, the Supreme Administrative Court relies, in particular, on a decision made in September 2023 by the Court of Cassation, which demanded that the government revise labor legislation to comply with the European directive. However, in February last year, the Constitutional Council made the opposite decision, considering that the current Labor Code does not violate the principles of the Constitution. Therefore, to make a decision, the government turned to the State Council.

The latter also limited to three years the retroactive effect of compensation due to workers who fell ill and lost leave from 1 December 2009, the date of entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty. “The claim for payment may relate to amounts due for the last three years from that date, or, upon termination of the employment contract, to amounts due for the three years preceding the termination of the contract,” the conclusion clarifies.

Amendment to the future bill

Employers’ organizations strongly opposed the provision of paid leave during sickness absence and were alarmed by the amount of money that companies could be forced to pay backdated. “Our work with the government has borne fruit,” Medef President Patrick Martin said in a social media post. His CPME colleague François Asselin assessed on the same network that “the absurdity has finally been corrected.”

Regarding the possibility of transferring leave taken during sick leave, the Council of State decided that it must be at least 15 months, and the Court of Justice of the European Union required that this duration be “substantially” longer than the reference period for sick leave. the right to annual leave of one year.

Labor Minister Catherine Vautrin promised in mid-January that “our country will obviously comply with European legislation.” Wishing to transpose the European directive, the government has called for a cap on paid leave for non-occupational illness to four weeks. The Council of State indicates that the government intends to propose an amendment as part of a bill adapting to European Union law, which is due to be considered by the Assembly from Monday.