The CFESES training leave: how France's 12-day scheme works

Twelve days a year to train in economics, employment law or trade-union action, pay maintained, open to any employee — union member or not: the CFESES (congé de formation économique, sociale, environnementale et syndicale — France’s economic, social, environmental and trade-union training leave) is one of the broadest training rights in the Labour Code, and one of the least known. It is also a scheme that training providers often confuse with CSE member training, even though its access rules — for trainees and providers alike — are very different. Here is the how-to.

A right open to all employees, not just elected members

Provided for by articles L. 2145-5 and following of the Labour Code, the CFESES allows any employee to attend economic, social, environmental or trade-union training courses. No seniority condition, no requirement to be a union member or hold a mandate: it is a right attached to the employment contract itself.

The annual caps:

Situation	Maximum duration per year
Any employee	12 days
Course facilitators and employees called to take on trade-union responsibilities	18 days

During the leave, pay is maintained by the employer; the leave counts as actual working time for the rights that depend on it.

A list-based logic that, unlike the CSE accreditation, has not gone away

This is the decisive point for training providers. Courses qualifying for the CFESES may only be run by centres attached to trade unions representative at national level or specialised institutes, whose list is set by ministerial order — the order of 22 December 2023 sets the list applicable for the years 2024 to 2026.

The contrast with CSE member training is striking: law n° 2026-403 of 26 May 2026 abolished the prefectoral accreditation that used to gate SSCT training and the economic course — a simple NDA (registered activity declaration number) is now enough on that market, as detailed on our CSE / SSCT approval overview. The CFESES, by contrast, was untouched by that reform: an ordinary training provider, however properly declared, does not qualify employees for the leave if it is not on the list. To operate on this segment, the realistic routes remain a pedagogical partnership with a listed institute, or positioning on the neighbouring — and open — markets of CSE member training.

How it connects to the CSE economic course

The CFESES and CSE training cross paths on one precise point: the duration of the titular CSE members’ economic training course — five days maximum, in companies with at least 50 employees — counts against the CFESES duration. A titular member who attends their economic course draws down their annual quota of 12 days.

SSCT training, by contrast, follows its own regime (employer funding, specific durations), and the funding differs too: the CSE economic course is paid from the committee’s operating budget, while courses taken under the CFESES rely on other circuits — notably funding by the trade unions through the joint fund for financing social dialogue. The same elected member can therefore mobilise several schemes in one year, with a different payer each time.

Why this right exists: training worker representation

The CFESES rests on a long-standing conviction of French labour law: quality social dialogue requires trained representatives, including outside any mandate. Empirical research supports that intuition. David Walters’ work on the effectiveness of worker representation in health and safety in Britain, published in 1996, shows that this effectiveness depends closely on the resources available to representatives — training first among them — and on the organisational support they receive (see the study). In the same vein, the study by Barry Reilly, Pierella Paci and Peter Holl published in 1995 in the British Journal of Industrial Relations associates the presence of health-and-safety committees with staff representatives with a significant drop in workplace injuries (see the study). Training employees broadly in economics and social matters is not a militant luxury: it is the infrastructure of social dialogue.

In practice: requesting and taking your CFESES

The employee sends their leave request to the employer within the notice period set by the regulations, stating the date and duration of the absence and the name of the organisation — necessarily a centre or institute on the list. As with elected members’ training leave, the employer’s refusal is strictly framed: it must be justified by detrimental consequences for production and the smooth running of the company, after consulting the CSE, and only amounts to a postponement. The total days taken under this heading in the year may not exceed the 12- or 18-day caps, CSE economic course included since it counts against them.

Take action

The CFESES remains closed to providers outside the list, but it completes the map of staff-representative training — whose SSCT and economic-course segments have, for their part, been open to any declared provider since May 2026. To understand what changed and position your offer on CSE member training, see our CSE / SSCT approval overview and download our free guide there.