Company employee abroad: secondment, expatriation or local contract

A seconded employee stays, for the whole assignment, affiliated with the French Social Security scheme: employer and employee contributions keep being paid as if they were working in France, evidenced by form A1 (or an equivalent certificate outside the European Union). Secondment is always time-limited — 24 months maximum in the EU/EEA/Switzerland, subject to extension conditions, or a period set by a bilateral agreement elsewhere. Because they remain covered by French Social Security, a seconded employee doesn’t need to join CFE to keep base cover — top-up insurance remains useful for the gap between French reference rates and the real local cost. See in detail seconded or expatriate: how to check your own status and what it changes for CFE.

An expatriate employee in the social-security sense is not seconded: they stop falling under the French scheme and are required to contribute to the scheme of their country of activity, with no time limit. It is precisely because they lose their French affiliation that an expatriate can choose to voluntarily join CFE to keep cover modelled on Social Security — a choice, where a seconded employee gets it automatically.

Signing a local contract directly with a host-country employer, under that country’s labour law, generally means affiliation with the local social protection scheme rather than the French one. The situation then resembles that of an expatriate: this is the key moment to assess whether the local scheme is enough, or whether it needs to be topped up with CFE membership and/or private insurance.

• Seconded: base cover already provided by French Social Security — the issue is topping up the gap between French rates and the real local cost.
• Expatriate or local contract: no more automatic French affiliation — the choice is between CFE membership (possibly topped up) and first-euro health insurance.
• The actual status depends on the employment contract and the host country, not just how you perceive your own situation — if in doubt, the status diagnostic helps clarify which of the three set-ups applies.