Parliament definitively adopts a text to simplify the mobility of work-study students abroad

Parliament definitively adopted, by a vote in the Senate on Tuesday December 19, a text intended to promote an “Erasmus of learning” by facilitating the international mobility of work-study students. The bill from MP Sylvain Maillard (Renaissance), voted on in recent months in the National Assembly, was adopted identically by the upper house. The Minister for Vocational Education and Training, Carole Grandjean, welcomed a “pragmatic text which focuses point by point on responding to the obstacles noted by the actors”.

This law will make it possible to remove certain barriers to the mobility of work-study students. According to the government, it constitutes one response among others to the objective set by Emmanuel Macron of allowing half of an age group to have spent, before the age of 25, at least six months abroad.

Unlike those planned for students, exchanges of apprentices, who have an employment contract with an employer, often come up against very different labor rights from one Member State to another regarding work-study students. In France, the Labor Code, for example, prevents an employer from letting his apprentice leave for more than four weeks, unless his employment contract is suspended. However, this duration is insufficient to fully benefit from experience abroad. The proposed law therefore creates a right of option for the company: a suspension of the contract, the employer’s liability then being lifted, or a provision of the work-study student by the company, with maintenance of his responsibility and remuneration.