Marine Le Pen plans to tax French companies €1,000 a year for hiring foreign workers

The far-right Rassemblement National has outlined plans on how its policy of ‘national preference’ for French citizens would affect foreign people working in the country.

Harsher rules would see companies forced to pay a €1,000 per-year tax for hiring non-EU/non-EEA/non-Swiss citizens, in a measure the far-right party openly called “discrimination”.

The Rassemblement National (RN) laid out the plans in its ‘alternative budget’, a document released outlining its five-year plan for the French economy between 2027 - 2032.

The ambitious proposals, which will be taken as the party’s economic policy plan going into the 2027 presidential election, cover €140 billion in savings and cuts across the five years. 

This would drop France’s deficit to below 3% by 2030, said the party, compared to 5.4% by the end of 2026. 

The ‘counter-budget’ has been criticised, however, for making wide assumptions in savings that are far from guaranteed, including billions in savings by reducing France’s commitments to the EU budget – a move that cannot be taken unilaterally and must be approved by other member states. 

Annual tax for hiring foreign workers

A major point of concern in the text was an outline of how the ‘national preference’ scheme would apply to employers in both the public- and private-sector (although individuals who employ other individuals would be exempt).

The far-right party has long promoted these policies, which would see French citizens receive priority access to housing and benefits (and in more recent proposals, see non-citizens barred from certain benefits altogether). 

Following the 2024 legislative elections, the party published an economic manifesto, which included plans to widen national preference policies to include employment.

Companies would be required to hire a French citizen if an eligible one could be found, with only certain specialist roles being offered on an equal basis to foreign workers and French citizens. 

The alternative budget expands on this, with private-sector companies facing a €1,000 per-year tax for each non-EU/non-EEA/non-Swiss citizen they employ.

This includes UK, US, Canadian, and Australian citizens, alongside those from countries that form large migrant communities in France (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Turkey, Senegal, etc). 

The text does not explicitly cover the status of Britons who have a Withdrawal Agreement card (living in France before Brexit), and this would need to be clarified.

Far from being a simple deterrent, the party believes the tax could be a windfall for the government.

The RN said that around 1.3 million ‘foreign’ nationals are employed in France, equalling an annual revenue of €1.3 billion from the tax. 

This is adjusted down to €1 billion per year by the party to factor in the loss of jobs, estimating up to 300,000 foreign nationals would be fired or quit following the changes. 

“Foreign labour comes at a cost to society, so it is perfectly normal to consider a tax on such hires,” said Marine Le Pen in a speech at an agricultural fair yesterday (October 7).

“And the obvious condition is that, once the employment contract ends, the people who came to work return home. That does not seem to particularly trouble the unions.”

The party freely admitted this is discrimination against a person’s nationality.

It is “the only form of discrimination we openly advocate,” said Renaud Labaye, an adviser to the party’s presidential candidate Marine Le Pen in light of the alternative budget.

Plans criticised 

The measure has been criticised by several groups, including ‘Les Entrepreneurs’, an organisation representing 320,000 businesses and six million employees. 

The group called the measure “economic nonsense” in a statement on the budget.

“This proposal effectively creates a new tax on perfectly legal, existing employment, thereby driving up labour costs once again.”

“The priority must be to remove barriers to employment and competitiveness, not to create new ones.” 

It also queried the flat rate of the tax: “Why impose the same €1,000 fee on an employee earning the minimum wage and on an executive earning €100,000 a year?” 

The measure has also been criticised for failing to take into account France’s labour market, which relies on immigrant labour in several low-paying sectors. 

“It strikes us as completely unrealistic and out of touch with the social realities of our profession,” said director general of personal services employees Fédésap Julien Jourdan to Le Monde. 

“Some of our member companies have a workforce of a thousand, of which around 60% are foreign workers with residence permits, particularly in major cities,” he added.

Several sectors are dominated by immigrant workers, including construction and public works.

France’s booming tourism industry would likely suffer, with 40% of hotel staff working in and around Paris immigrants, according to national statistics body Insee.

Further criticism comes from the long-term effects of such a policy, at a time where France’s population is ageing and there are not enough young workers to fulfil care roles, including nursing and at-home care. 

Further plans to be outlined 

The RN is set to double down on these measures, however, and announce further plans for ‘national preference’ across several areas of French society in the run-up to the spring 2027 presidential election.

The 2024 economic policy manifesto included an “enforceable right to employment for French citizens,” as outlined by RN MP Jean-Philippe Tanguy at the time, which is expected to be part of the party’s 2027 manifesto. 

“An individual could take legal action for discrimination if they believed a foreign national had been unfairly hired instead of them. The employer would have to prove that no French citizen had applied for the position,” said the MP back in 2024. 

Changes to the French Constitution to make national discrimination of this kind legal would be required – and have also been previously touted by the RN – but whether this is possible is up for debate. Lawyers have previously said such changes would be illegal.

If made, however, the changes would enshrine the right of French citizens to housing, benefits, and in the case above, employment, ahead of non-citizens. In some cases, this would also include against other EU nationals.

How radical would changes be? 

While the policy announcement has grabbed headlines for its financial penalty, the other measures are not that different to current policies. 

Indeed, foreign citizens looking to work in France must have a valid residency permit that also includes the right to work (Connexion readers will know that many cards do not allow for employment or work of any kind). 

Jobs must have been posted with the service public de l’emploi (public employment service) for at least three weeks, allowing locals to apply, before applications requiring work-authorisation requests can be made. 

The only roles excluded from this are those considered to be facing shortages by the labour ministry. 

Indeed, companies hiring foreign nationals on fixed-term contracts are already required to pay a fee, if the employee is settling in France for the first time.