OD FLASH | Cancellation of a redundancy plan: the information and consultation procedure with the works council is not necessary, except in the event of substantial changes.

Conseil d’Etat, June 27, 2025, No. 463870

In accordance with the provisions of the Labor Code in force, in the event of a plan to implement a redundancy plan (PSE), the employer must inform and consult the works council (CSE) on the proposed collective redundancy and the content of the plan, providing it with all the information necessary to give an informed opinion.

On May 21, 2021, the Regional and Interdepartmental Directorate for the Economy, Employment, Labor, and Solidarity of the Île-de-France region (DRIEETS) approved a company’s PSE. At the request of a trade union and several employees, the Melun Administrative Court overturned this approval decision on October 14, 2021. The Paris Administrative Court of Appeal, in a ruling dated March 10, 2022, upheld this annulment.

At the same time, following the court’s annulment of the PSE, the employer relaunched an information and consultation procedure with the central and establishment works councils, based on an updated version of the PSE. Both committees unanimously issued unfavorable opinions.

However, the new version of the PSE was approved by the DRIEETS on March 11, 2022. This second approval decision was also challenged. The administrative court, in a judgment dated July 18, 2022, dismissed the claims.

Yet, challenging this position, the administrative court of appeal, in a ruling dated December 16, 2022, overturned this judgment and thus upheld the applicants’ claims.

In order to overturn the approval, the court held, in particular, that the two meetings of the establishment’s CSE relating to the new version of the PSE had been held only seven days apart, in breach of the minimum period of fifteen days provided for in Article L. 1233-30 of the Labor Code.

The Conseil d’Etat is hearing both cases, as the two appeals have been joined.

The main issue was therefore the regularity of the second information and consultation procedure.

The Conseil d’Etat rejected the reasoning adopted by the lower courts. It first recalled that when the decision approving the PSE has been annulled by a court decision, the employer may resubmit a PSE corresponding to the same restructuring operation it has undertaken, including, where necessary, amendments to address the grounds for annulment, for consultation with the relevant employee representative bodies.

It then specifies that, if the members of the relevant employee representative bodies must then be provided with all the relevant information in sufficient time to enable them to give their opinion in full knowledge of the facts on the new version of the PSE, the employer is only required to repeat all the steps of the information and consultation procedure with these bodies under the conditions provided for in Articles L. 1233-30 and L. 1233-36 of the Labor Code if the changes made to the initial version of its job protection plan are substantial.

The Conseil d’Etat noted that, in this case, the new version of the plan contained only minor changes compared to the initial PSE. These amendments were limited to clarifications concerning the application of the professional qualification criteria to three of the professional categories affected by the job cuts and to updates, dictated by the passage of time, concerning the provisional timetable for the implementation of the plan and the list of positions offered for internal redeployment. Therefore, in view of the circumstances of the case, the employer was not required to repeat the entire information and consultation procedure.