French civil servants and training organizations: the rules on holding a second activity

Teachers, GRETA trainers, local-government experts in a technical field: many French civil servants eventually consider sharing their expertise outside their administration — or even creating their own training organization. The project is legal, but it can’t be run the same way a private-sector employee would run it: the Code général de la fonction publique (CGFP) strictly regulates combining a public position with a private lucrative activity, on pain of disciplinary and financial sanctions. Here’s what the law allows, and under which regime.

The principle: a duty of exclusivity, with precise exceptions

Article L. 121-3 of the CGFP sets out the baseline rule: public agents devote the entirety of their professional activity to the duties entrusted to them. Article L. 123-1 draws the direct consequence: a public agent may not, as a professional activity, engage in any private lucrative activity whatsoever. This principle of exclusivity is not absolute, however: the same code sets out several exception regimes, two of which directly concern a training project. Which one applies depends on a simple question: do you want to occasionally work as a trainer, or create your own organization?

First case: working as a trainer without creating your own structure

If the plan is to give training sessions for another organization — public or private — without setting up your own structure, the accessory activity regime applies (articles L. 123-7 and following of the CGFP, detailed by decree n° 2020-69 of 30 January 2020). Its article 11 lists the accessory activities that may be authorized, and “teaching and training” is explicitly included — it is in fact one of the combinations most readily accepted by administrations, covering, for example, sessions given by a teacher at a GRETA outside their teaching hours.

Three cumulative conditions govern the authorization:

• prior authorization from the hierarchical authority, based on a written request describing the planned activity;
• the activity must be carried out outside the agent’s working hours;
• compatibility with the duties performed: the activity must not harm the normal operation, independence, or neutrality of the service, nor create a conflict-of-interest situation.

Under this regime, the agent works as a trainer on behalf of a third party (their own public employer on a separate assignment, a GRETA, or a private organization that employs them for the sessions): they do not declare an NDA in their own name, since it is the employing structure that carries the training-organization obligations.

Second case: creating or taking over your own training organization

The project changes in nature as soon as the agent wants to become the declared operator of a training organization themselves — as a sole trader or through a company they run. In that case, the part-time authorization to combine activities for business creation or takeover applies (articles L. 123-4 to L. 123-6 of the CGFP). The authorization, issued by the agent’s employing authority, is granted for a maximum of three years, renewable once for one year — four years in total from the creation or takeover of the business.

The request must be made in writing before the activity starts, describing the project in enough detail for the public employer to assess its compatibility. Where the hierarchical authority has serious doubts about that compatibility — particularly in light of the duties the agent performed over the three years preceding the request — it refers the matter to the administration’s ethics referee (référent déontologue) for an opinion, which suspends the review period until that opinion is received.

A deliberately limited duration

This four-year cap is not a minor detail: once it expires, the part-time authorization can no longer be renewed. The agent must then choose between returning to full-time public duties — and therefore scaling down or transferring their training organization — or leaving the civil service (resignation, or unpaid leave for personal reasons) to focus fully on their work as a trainer. Planning for this deadline from the moment the request is filed avoids having to decide under time pressure as the term approaches.

NDA, Qualiopi: two entirely separate regimes

Once the authorization to combine activities has been obtained on the civil-service side, creating the training organization follows exactly the same steps as for any other founder: filing the activity declaration (Cerfa 10782) with the DREETS as soon as the first training contract is signed, filing the annual pedagogical and financial report, and pursuing Qualiopi certification if the activity targets public or pooled funding. The DREETS requires no evidence related to civil-service status to register a declaration, and a Qualiopi certification body audits the organization against the framework’s 32 indicators, regardless of its director’s separate professional situation. These are two different administrations, governed by two different bodies of law, and neither conditions its approval on the other’s — but the absence of authorization to combine activities remains sanctionable regardless of how compliant the NDA is.

Sanctions for unauthorized combination of activities

Operating without the required authorization is not a minor administrative irregularity. Article L. 123-9 of the CGFP provides, without prejudice to disciplinary proceedings, for the repayment of sums received for the unauthorized activity — a repayment made by deduction from salary, which the Conseil d’État classifies as a financial sanction distinct from a disciplinary one. Disciplinary proceedings for a breach of the duty of integrity may be added on top, and, in situations where the training activity creates a direct conflict with the agent’s duties, a possible criminal charge for illegal taking of interest. Combining activities without authorization remains one of the most frequently sanctioned ethical breaches in the French civil service — regularizing the situation after the fact, once the activity has already started, does not remove any of these consequences.

Why so many public agents take the leap

The shift from a single public role to a combined activity — and sometimes on to full-time independent training work — fits into a broader phenomenon that goes well beyond the French civil service. A systematic review of the multiple-jobholding literature, published in 2020 in the Journal of Management by Emily D. Campion, Brianna B. Caza, and Sherry E. Moss, shows that taking on a second activity often serves as a stepping stone toward a gradual career change: the second job lets people build skills and test a project before making it their main activity, rather than simply supplementing their income. That is exactly the logic behind the part-time authorization for business creation available to public agents: a four-year window to validate an independent-trainer project before making a final choice between the two paths.

Checklist before you start

• Identify the right regime: accessory activity (sessions for a third party) or part-time authorization for business creation (your own structure).
• Submit a written request to the hierarchical authority before starting any activity, with a precise description of the project.
• Anticipate a possible referral to the ethics referee if there is doubt about compatibility with your duties.
• Note the authorization’s expiry date (four years maximum for business creation) and prepare for the decision ahead.
• Once authorization is obtained, start the standard training-organization steps in parallel: NDA, annual report, and Qualiopi preparation if you’re targeting public funding.

Take action

Once the civil-service authorization is secured, creating the training organization follows the same path as for any other founder: declaration, first contracts, then certification if you’re targeting OPCO or CPF funding. The ebook Create your training organization in 30 days (€67) walks through every step, and the Complete Kit Certif (€297) directly prepares the framework’s 32 indicators for the initial audit. The complete pack (€347) combines both resources to secure creation and certification in one go.