France: Employment of non-European foreigners

More than one in five jobs in France, or 5.4 million jobs, remain inaccessible to non-EU foreigners, the search for the Observatory on Inequalities.

Non-European foreigners are banned from 4.1 million jobs in the civil service and semi-public companies. However, European legislation has obliged states to open competitions for civil servants, but only to foreign nationals who are citizens of the Member States of the European Union. These competitions therefore remain closed to other non-European foreigners who, for example, cannot become teachers in schools. On the other hand, they may occupy certain posts as contract staff, i.e. as non-established staff. Their status is more precarious than that of ‘real’ officials.

Several professions in the private sector, often liberal, are not open to foreigners because only French diplomas are recognised there. These are usually medical or legal professions. However, they may be practised with a foreign nationality, provided they hold a French diploma or obtain equivalence. A young foreigner who has studied in France may, for example, be employed as a dentist if he or she has graduated from a French school. The process of recognising foreign qualifications is very long, if not impossible, depending on the profession.

However, some progress has been made: the statutes of the staff of RATP, the manager of Paris public transport, social security bodies and EDF-GDF (now Engie and GRDF), and of the Post Office, have abolished the nationality requirement for the recruitment of their staff. Air France did the same after its privatisation in 2003, and at SNCF, the abolition of recruitment with the special status of cheminot in 2020 gave access to almost 120 000 jobs for foreigners born outside the European Union.