Mandatory agreement, duration limited to 6 months, minimum wage: do the increasingly restrictive French laws on internships represent obstacles to professional integration or protection against precariousness?
Whether a mandatory or voluntary step for many students, the internship is now an integral part of the school curriculum and has become the gateway to businesses.
In a still-difficult economic climate, particularly in Europe, companies remain rather wary of hiring young graduates directly. They are therefore turning to a less "risky" solution: using interns. Some companies abuse this solution and hire intern after intern without ever recruiting new employees. Several testimonies describe these situations of abuse, such as that of a long-term intern journalist who ended up without a job .
For several years now, the government has been trying to combat this precarious situation and several measures have been put in place. In 2010, a bonus for hiring an intern aimed to encourage companies to recruit their interns, but it was a failure. In 2011, the Cherpion law limited the duration of an internship in the same company to 6 months per year of teaching and in 2013 the so-called "gratification" remuneration, mandatory from 2 months of internship, was increased to 12.5% of the hourly ceiling of social security, or €436.03 on January 1, 2013. Finally, internship agreements are mandatory, which represents a real challenge to obtain for young graduates who would like to (re)become interns.
All of these legislative measures are intended to protect interns from abuse, from precarious work situations, and to ensure better working conditions. Have they discouraged companies, which do not abuse the system, from taking on interns? This remains difficult to establish because interns are not registered. However, estimates continue to increase year after year, which suggests a rather positive trend.
In conclusion, French laws may appear increasingly restrictive, both for companies and for the interns themselves. However, these restrictions allow for the imposition of a framework structuring the conditions of these seemingly temporary employees.
