On a PIP in France: insuffisance, the barème and the rupture

Insuffisance is not a fault, and that distinction does most of the work

French performance dismissal runs on insuffisance professionnelle — an inability to perform satisfactorily, shown by objective, precise, verifiable facts, and expressly without fault. The Cour de cassation restated it sharply in September 2025: absent a deliberate refusal or deliberate ill-will, insuffisance is not a fault. Errors and negligence sit on the non-disciplinary track.

The lever cuts hard. An employer who dismisses for faute grave — which carries no indemnity and no notice — when the facts are really insuffisance gets the dismissal requalified. And if the letter's facts are neither established as insuffisance nor faultive, the dismissal is sans cause réelle et sérieuse, with full indemnities.

Misclassification is the most common French employer error, and the dismissal letter is the first thing to read for it.

Related doctrine, all of it useful

• Missing targets alone never justifies dismissal. Objectives must be realistic, compatible with the market, known in advance, with the means to meet them provided — and the miss has to trace to inadequacy or fault.
• "Loss of confidence" is never on its own a cause.
• The employer owes you training. The obligation d'adaptation (C. trav. L6321-1) means a dismissal is unjustified where the errors stem from the employer's failure to train. A support-free plan is self-defeating in France in a way it is not elsewhere.
• Evaluation tools must have been disclosed beforehand and must use objective criteria.

Procedure, and why the letter is everything

The non-disciplinary personal-grounds procedure runs: a registered-letter convocation at least five working days before the entretien préalable, at which you may be assisted by a colleague or, in small firms, an external adviser; you respond in the meeting; the dismissal letter follows.

The letter fixes the grounds of any later litigation. Only limited clarification is allowed afterwards. So the wording of that document, not what was said in the meeting, defines the case. You have twelve months to contest at the prud'hommes — long by comparison, and the deadlines page has every clock the guide covers, shortest first.

On any dismissal that is not for faute grave you are owed the statutory indemnity, notice and holiday pay, and collective agreements often improve on that — worth checking whether yours excludes the insuffisance motive from its enhanced indemnity.

The barème, and what escapes it

If a dismissal is unjustified, damages follow the barème Macron (L1235-3): mandatory floor and ceiling brackets set by seniority and company size, on top of the dismissal indemnity. The Cour de cassation's plenary assembly validated the scale in May 2022 and barred case-by-case departures from it.

The brackets themselves, read from the code in September 2026 and counted in complete years of service. In a firm of eleven or more: under one year there is no floor and the ceiling is one month; at one year, one to two months; from two years the floor becomes three months and stays there; the ceiling climbs to ten months at ten years and reaches twenty at twenty-nine, where it stops. In a firm under eleven, the floors are lower, from half a month at one year to two and a half at ten.

This is the employer's downside, not your entitlement. It is what a tribunal could award if a dismissal were found to be without real and serious cause, and it is the number worth having in mind before any conversation about a negotiated exit.

Nullité cases escape the scale entirely — discrimination, moral or sexual harassment, whistleblowing, pregnancy, fundamental freedoms, strike. Damages there are uncapped with a six-month minimum, and reinstatement is possible. An aggressive plan shading into harcèlement moral moves a case out of the barème's ceiling. That is a factual question with a high bar, but the category exists.

The rupture conventionnelle, and two changes landing in 2026

The rupture conventionnelle is France's dominant negotiated exit and its most distinctive feature: a mutual termination that preserves unemployment rights by construction, which mutual terminations do not do in Spain, Estonia or Germany.

The machinery: one or more meetings, a signed convention, then fifteen calendar days in which either party may retract, then a homologation request to the DREETS which has fifteen working days to object — silence approves. A month end to end, minimum. The indemnity can never be below the dismissal indemnity, and consent given under pressure is a ground for annulment.

Two things moved in 2026 and both are dated:

• The employer's levy rose to 40% of the exempt portion of the indemnity from 1 January 2026, up from 30%. It makes the rupture conventionnelle more expensive to offer and does not touch what you receive — so it changes the employer's willingness, not your arithmetic.
• Unemployment duration after a rupture conventionnelle falls from 1 September 2026. Under 55s go from 18 months to 15; those 55 and over from up to 27 months to 20.5. The trigger is the date the contract actually ends — not the signature date and not homologation. Since the process takes about a month end to end, a rupture conventionnelle started now lands on the new durations.

Two ways to lose your unemployment benefit

Dismissal of any kind, including for faute grave, keeps ARE. Resignation forfeits it outside narrow legitimate cases. So does the newer trap:

Abandon de poste is now presumed resignation. If you walk away and do not return after a formal notice giving you at least fifteen calendar days, you are treated as having resigned — and a resignation does not draw benefit. The mechanism is settled rather than contested; the Conseil d'État upheld the decree in December 2024. You can rebut the presumption with a legitimate reason, and a contest goes straight to the prud'hommes judgment panel, which must rule within a month.

The practical point: disengaging from a plan by simply stopping is the one response that converts a benefit-preserving ending into a benefit-killing one. The benefit page has the durations after a rupture conventionnelle and the abandon de poste procedure in full.

France reforms faster than this page can

Fairhanded is not a law firm, and France is the most reform-active jurisdiction covered here — two changes landed in 2026 alone. Where your situation turns on a legal question, and particularly before signing a rupture conventionnelle, take it to a French employment lawyer.