You are a foreign company with no place of business in France and you employ salaried staff in France (as such you are required to submit declarations and payments of social security contributions unemployment benefit contributions and other social taxes for your employees) : subjet to Article L 243-1-2 of the French social security code (‘Code de la Sécurité Sociale’).
Your foreign company must register with Foreign Companies Service by completing an EE0 form INSEE to allocate an identification number (‘SIRET’), and contributions account at Foreign Companies Service.
Before recruiting an employee, employers must declare their intention by making a declaration prior to recruitment (‘déclaration préalable à l’embauche’ - DPAE). The DPAE is a compulsory procedure for declaring each employee to be recruited, and must be made within the eight days prior to recruitment.
This gives you the benefit of a means of proving the actual date of recruitment to the control agencies.
For contributions that must be paid into the compulsory supplementary pension schemes, you must register with the Malakoff Humanis additional pension fund.
If you employ crew staff you must subscribe to CRPN.
You are required to offer your employees (except to those who already have cover) collective supplementary health cover in addition to basic sickness insurance provided by social security scheme.
This does not include private individuals employing domestic staff.
Some employees on short-term contracts may be exempted from joining the collective scheme and receive a health payment (‘versement santé’) from their employer.
You can consult your rights on-line at service-public.fr.
A providence scheme is a form of social protection in addition to the compulsory scheme. It provides you with protection against the risks connected with death, inability to work, invalidity, and dependence.
You must join a providence fund if:
- You recruit a managerial employee (‘cadre’);
- Required by collective agreement (‘convention collective’) valid in the branch of your activity.
To find out which collective agreement (‘convention collective’) applies to you, you can contact the DREETS by phoning 3939, or +33 173 603 939 from abroad, or consult the website at Legifrance.
Companies in the building and public works sector must register with the CIBTP in order to pay contributions in respect of paid holidays, unemployment in the event of adverse weather conditions, and contributions to the prevention of accidents on the workplace.
If you employ crew staff you must subscribe to CRPN (pension fund for crew staff) instead of Malakoff Humanis, and therefore have to affiliate at DSN to declare your social contributions.