On 22 March the French parliament passed an emergency bill to address the Covid-19 pandemic. The bill allows the government to introduce emergency measures by ordinance, particularly in the areas of employment law and social security. In the coming days, to address the impact on business amid the ongoing crisis, the government may therefore enact measures that will extend access to short-time working or to allow the employer to draw on leave and RTT days (working time reduction).
Even though the government’s bill was examined over a period of only four days, deputies and senators in France had an opportunity to make amendments on certain points. The bill sought to allow the government to introduce provisional measures, via decree, to “limit the termination of company activities […] and layoffs” (see article n°11736).
Article 7 of the version of the bill that was definitively adopted on 22 March allows the government to enact measures, in the three months following the law’s publication in France’s official journal, in order to limit the termination of employment contracts and to soften the impact of the decline in business volumes, by facilitating recourse to short-time working.
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