WHEN a new French law banned employees from checking work e-mails after 6pm, it was bound to grab headlines. It fit all too neatly the image held by les anglo-saxons of France as a work-shy nation of long lunches and short working weeks. And all too neat it was. In fact, no such law existed. But by the time anybody noticed, the damage had been done, prompting Axelle Lemaire, the new French minister for the digital economy, to tweet a denial (in English) on April 13th.

News of the French ban ricocheted through the English-speaking media at the end of last week. “No after-work e-mails please. French ordered to ignore the boss after 6pm” ran the title of one report. Plenty followed suit, for example, here, here and here.



Reports suggested that a new law covering about 1m employees forbade them from consulting e-mails before 9am and after 6pm. “C’est all right for some, quoi?” quipped Lucy Mangan in the Guardian, in a blog post that has since been corrected. And yes, oops, we were a bit overenthusiastic ourselves in one of The Economist’s London-based blogs.

In fact, there was no new piece of French legislation, but a labour agreementsigned on April 1st by unions and employers in the high-tech and consulting field. It covers an estimated 250,000 “autonomous employees”, whose contracts are based on days worked, not hours, and so the 35-hour working week limit does not apply. The agreement does refer to an “obligation to disconnect communications tools”, but only after an employee has worked a 13-hour day. Such workers may work into the weekends too, but must be allowed to have one day off in every seven (24 hours + 11 hours). Nowhere does the agreement refer to a 6pm cut-off. By the standards of most French labour contracts, which have to apply the 35-hour working week, it is unusually liberal, and was designed to help global companies that deal across different time zones.

Needless to say, the French media unpicked the foreign reports with a mix of bafflement and indignation, leading to much grumbling on Twitter and finally to Ms Lemaire’s corrective tweet. The whole business was all the more awkward given that President François Hollande has been edging towards a more business-friendly economic policy under his new prime minister, Manuel Valls. Yet, with a 35-hour working week, entrenched union rights within companies, and a strict 3,500-page labour code, the reality remains that the country does not make it easy for firms to operate. The real trouble for France is that the story even appeared plausible in the first place.