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🇫🇷 France · HR & staff

Fixed-Term Employment Contract (Contrat de travail à durée déterminée, CDD)

Fixed-term (CDD) employment contract — MUST be in writing (Code du travail, art. L1242-12) and transmitted to the employee within 2 working days of hiring (art. L1242-13); the absence of a written contract, or of one of the mandatory mentions below, automatically RECLASSIFIES the relationship into an open-ended CDI.

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Country
🇫🇷 France
Category
HR & staff
Language of the text
EN
Version
1

⚠️ This is a blank template, not legal advice: check the wording with a lawyer and adapt it to your jurisdiction and your case.

This template has no optional clauses: the text is the same for everyone. Field placeholders are shown as labels — on the site the template is read-only, values are entered inside the system.

Document

FIXED-TERM EMPLOYMENT CONTRACT (CONTRAT DE TRAVAIL À DURÉE DÉTERMINÉE, CDD)

Between: Employer name, Employer address, the "Employer", and: Employee name, the "Employee". Contract date: Contract date.

1. ⚠️ MANDATORY WRITTEN FORM AND TRANSMISSION DEADLINE 1.1. Under art. L1242-12 of the Code du travail, a CDD MUST be in writing and MUST state, among other mandatory mentions, the precise reason for recourse to a fixed term. The ABSENCE of a written contract automatically reclassifies the relationship as an open-ended CDI. 1.2. Under art. L1242-13, the signed contract must be transmitted to the employee within 2 WORKING DAYS of the start of employment. Late transmission (even if eventually signed) can by itself expose the Employer to compensation of up to 1 month's salary. Confirmation: Transmission deadline confirmation

2. POSITION AND REASON FOR THE FIXED TERM (MOTIF DE RECOURS) 2.1. Position: "Position". 2.2. Reason: Reason for the fixed term (motif de recours) 2.3. If replacement: name and qualification of the replaced employee: Name/qualification of the replaced employee 2.4. ⚠️ Only the exhaustive list of reasons set out by law justifies a CDD; a CDD used merely to fill a permanent, structural staffing need — without one of these specific reasons — is a classic ground for requalification into a CDI before the conseil de prud'hommes.

3. TERM 3.1. Term 3.2. Fixed end date, if applicable: End date 3.3. Minimum duration, if no fixed end date: Minimum duration

4. SALARY 4.1. Gross salary: Gross salary.

5. PROBATION PERIOD 5.1. Probation period: Probation period (days) days (statutory cap: 1 day per week of the term, up to a maximum of 2 weeks for terms of 6 months or less, or 1 month beyond).

6. END-OF-CONTRACT BONUS (INDEMNITÉ DE FIN DE CONTRAT) 6.1. End-of-contract bonus (indemnité de fin de contrat / prime de précarité)

SIGNATURES Employer ______________ / on behalf of Employer name / Employee ______________ / Employee name /

— — — ⚠️ This is a boilerplate template, not legal advice. French employment, consumer-protection and data-protection law (Code du travail, Convention collective HCR "CCN HCR", Code de la consommation, RGPD/CNIL, Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 "INCO") is highly procedural, includes fixed statutory calendars (e.g. the entretien préalable and rupture conventionnelle timelines) and changes frequently — statutory figures (SMIC, grille HCR, sanction amounts) are re-indexed periodically. Have this document reviewed and adapted by a French employment/legal advisor (avocat en droit du travail / expert-comptable) and verified against the current rates before use. Under the loi Toubon (Law No. 94-665 of 4 August 1994), documents intended for use in France — employment contracts, consumer information, mandatory workplace notices — must be available in French; where a French-language version of this document is also used, that version prevails in case of conflict.

Fields of the document

Fields that belong to a switched-off clause are dimmed — they are not asked for.

  • Employer nametextrequiredautomatic
  • Employer addresslong textrequiredautomatic
  • Employee nametextrequiredautomatic
  • Positiontextrequiredautomatic
  • Reason for the fixed term (motif de recours)choicerequired
  • Name/qualification of the replaced employeetextoptional

    Required mention if the reason is "remplacement"

  • Termchoicerequired
  • End datedateoptional

    Required if a fixed end date was chosen above

  • Minimum durationtextoptional

    Required if no fixed end date was chosen (e.g. "until the replaced employee's return")

  • Gross salaryamountrequired

    At least SMIC (€12.31/hour as of 06.2026) or the applicable collective-agreement minimum

  • Probation period (days)numberoptional

    Statutory cap: 1 day per week of the term, up to 2 weeks (≤6 months) or 1 month (>6 months)

  • End-of-contract bonus (indemnité de fin de contrat / prime de précarité)choicerequired
  • Contract datedaterequired
  • Transmission deadline confirmationlong textrequired

    Confirm the signed contract was handed to the employee within 2 working days of the start date (art. L1242-13)

In Cenaly this template fills itself in

4 of 14 fields are taken from the company, employee or counterparty record, the questionnaire can be dictated to the AI, and the finished document comes with a number, a PDF and an acknowledgement record.