September 2014: the countdown has begun for the implementation of the reform of the laws on internships!

Members of Parliament and Senators recently voted on changes to the legislative framework governing internships. Here's a brief overview of the new rules, including internship duration, pay, leave, and more.

The final adoption of the law improving the status of interns took place on the night of June 3-4, 2014. The main new provisions will not come into effect until the start of the 2014/2015 academic year, while the law is published and institutions and businesses become aware of it. Here are the key takeaways:

Increase in monthly gratuity

Better conditions were voted on with an advance on the salary side: the monthly allowance increases from 436.05 euros to 523.26 euros for internships of more than 2 months and will be tax-exempt (applicable from the start of the 2015 school year). Thus, interns will have to be paid from their first month of internship (instead of the second month until now), will have access to the company restaurant and/or meal vouchers and will have part of their transport costs covered . Their presence time will be aligned with that of the other employees of the company, leave and absences (in the case of pregnancy, paternity or adoption in particular) are also now provided for.

The internship duration remains limited to six months per academic year. Quotas for the number of interns hosted by the company during the same calendar year will also be established to limit abuses. In the event of a violation, the company is liable to a fine of €2,000 per intern.

Labour inspections will therefore be more frequent to ensure compliance with this new law, and the time limit for going before the industrial tribunal to reclassify internships as employment contracts has been shortened to 1 month.

Introduction of paid leave for interns

On the side of educational establishments, a minimum pedagogical volume of training will be required, a reference teacher will be responsible for monitoring the student during their internship, while educational establishments will have to direct their students towards host organizations offering internships when obtaining the diploma is conditional on the completion of an internship.

Decrees remain to be issued to set, among other things, trainee quotas and the number of teaching hours. These are all measures to further regulate and prevent abuses—according to the CGT, there are approximately 100,000 disguised jobs, or nearly 6% of internships. This is also an opportunity to simplify and bring together all the changes that have taken place in recent years for greater understanding, whether for students, businesses, or educational institutions.

Brain drain or job creation?

Unfortunately, even though this reform aims to protect interns, it only makes access to internship opportunities more difficult. It should automatically encourage French students and recent graduates to complete their internships abroad, which are much more highly valued and have much more flexible conditions than in France, while students from foreign universities will think twice before applying for internships in France.

Loss of competitiveness, brain drain, or more young people hired straight out of school and real, empowering and educational internships, only the future will tell us what the impact of this new reform will be.