A contract of employment of a particular kind

Garage Delmas wants to take on an eighteen-year-old and train him over two years, paying 700 € a month while he learns. The owner calls it a long internship. The labour code sees a contract of employment, with the duties that come with it. Before you read: what does an apprenticeship contract actually bind, and on both sides?

A contract of employment, not an internship

Article L6221-1 of the labour code gives the characterisation at once: the apprenticeship contract is a contract of employment of a particular kind concluded between an apprentice or their legal representative and an employer.

The opening words settle the matter. It is a contract of employment: the apprentice is an employee, with a payslip, contributions, and the protections attaching to that status. What is particular is the training, not some intermediate status.

The mention of the legal representative signals the other particularity: the apprentice may be a minor, in which case it is their representative who contracts. The text anticipates it in its very first sentence.

Confusing apprenticeship with an internship has concrete consequences. An intern is not an employee and is covered by an agreement with an educational establishment; an apprentice is one, and their employer carries an employer's duties.

That single point of characterisation carries the rest of this course. Because the apprentice is an employee, hiring formalities apply, a wage floor applies, and termination follows a regime the parties cannot simply agree away between themselves.

Two undertakings on each side

The text sets out what the employer owes. They undertake, besides paying a salary, to provide the apprentice with complete vocational training delivered partly in the business and partly in an apprentice training centre or apprenticeship section.

Two distinct duties can therefore be read. Paying a salary, like any employer; and providing complete vocational training, which goes beyond hosting a young person on a post and binds the business as to what is learned.

The adjective complete is not decorative. Training cannot be reduced to the tasks that suit the business: it must cover the qualification being prepared, which the split between business and training centre organises.

In return, the apprentice undertakes, with a view to their training, to work for that employer for the duration of the contract, and to follow that training. Attending classes is not a favour done to the business: it is a contractual duty.

Sixteen years, twenty-nine completed

Article L6222-1 sets the age condition in one sentence: no one may be engaged as an apprentice unless aged at least sixteen and at most twenty-nine completed years at the start of the apprenticeship.

The moment of assessment matters as much as the limits. It is age at the start of the apprenticeship that counts, not age at signature nor age reached during the contract: an apprentice turning thirty mid-contract does not put it in question.

The second paragraph opens an early entry. Young people aged at least fifteen may begin an apprenticeship contract if they establish that they have completed the first cycle of secondary education.

The condition is therefore not only one of age, it is educational. Fifteen is not enough: completion of the first cycle must be established, which the business must check before contracting.

The upper limit likewise has exceptions, which article L6222-2 lists and which this course has not examined. An employer facing a candidate over twenty-nine should therefore open that article rather than conclude it is impossible.

Retaining the limit of principle and the existence of named exceptions is enough to avoid both symmetrical errors: turning away a candidate who falls under a derogation, or contracting with one without checking that they actually do.