France: National interprofessional agreement of 10 February 2023 on value sharing within the enterprise

All of the social partners (with the exception of the CGT trade union) have signed a national cross-industry agreement on “value-sharing”, which is intended to give employees a larger share of the fruits of their company’s financial performance. There are already several profit-sharing instruments in existence in France that apply to companies with at least 50 employees, such as ownership interest [participation] (which is compulsory and pays out a bonus based on the company’s profits) and profit-sharing schemes [intéressement] (which are optional, and involve paying bonuses linked to the company’s results or its non-financial performance). The new agreement, which will have to be transposed by a law, provides for an obligation requiring companies with between 11 and 49 employees to put in place one of these instruments, from 1 January 2025 onwards. Furthermore, when companies with at least 50 employees make extraordinary profits in France, they would then be obliged to either negotiate the automatic payment of a participation or intéressement [see above] supplement, or to commence discussions regarding an alternative value-sharing mechanism. Interestingly, the agreement allows for information on the group’s tax policy to be passed on to the EWC pursuant to Article L.2343-2 of the Labour Code. At companies with a workforce of more than 300, the economic, social and environmental database will be supplemented by new financial and tax information that may be useful to French EWC members.