France’s Labour Ministry announced a 12-measure, €80 million programme on 22 September to help workers, jobseekers and businesses adapt to AI, RFI reported. The measures span skills training, help for businesses, employer–employee discussions and conditions on the job, with smaller firms and apprentices a focus.
Key points
- The programme has €80 million in new funding and builds on France’s earlier business AI initiative.
- Pix is to launch a free learning platform, while France Travail will offer jobseekers AI assessments and training pathways.
- AI courses are to receive priority within the Personal Training Account, with higher co-funding expected to lower workers’ costs.
- The CGT union has criticised the absence of new employee rights and conditions on business aid.
France’s 18 percent adoption rate
The programme is called AI Impulse 2027 and extends the Dare to Use AI initiative launched in summer 2025, Konsulteer reported. It assigns €80 million in new funding to a workplace effort that includes tools for individuals, assistance for employers and support for discussions about how AI affects jobs. Around half its measures are intended to help workers become familiar with the technology and its possible effects on their work.
In 2025, 18 percent of French businesses used at least one AI-related technology, according to figures from national statistics agency INSEE reported by RFI. That was around half the rate in Europe’s most advanced countries. The Labour Ministry says adoption has been slower among French companies, and has raised the prospect of a widening divide between larger businesses able to invest and smaller ones with fewer resources.
The ministry has also been asked to find €2.5 billion in savings for the 2027 budget. Officials close to it said the measures were selected for their expected return on investment and for the prospect that tools developed under the programme could be used more widely. Separately, a Coface study published in April 2026 estimated that one in six jobs in France, roughly 5 million, could be automated within three to four years, Konsulteer reported.
Pix and France Travail take on training
Pix, France’s public digital skills service, is to launch a free platform called Explore AI. Users will be able to assess what they know and take interactive courses. Pix already provides AI-related courses for school pupils and will develop a separate platform for apprentices at France’s CFA training centres. The government also plans additional financial support for centres teaching skills it considers important to AI adoption, including cybersecurity.
Jobseekers are to be offered an AI readiness assessment through France Travail, the employment agency. Their results will be used to set a personalised training pathway. For people already in work, the government plans to designate AI a national priority within the Personal Training Account, known as the CPF, through which workers accumulate credits for professional training. Higher co-funding is expected to reduce what individuals pay for AI-related courses.
That CPF priority directs an existing training mechanism towards AI alongside the programme’s new funding. The plan also envisages business task forces working with small and medium-sized companies on potential workplace uses, including recruitment. Professional sectors are to receive support for discussions between employers and workers about AI’s effects on jobs and working conditions.
CGT challenges the terms of business aid
Economy Minister Roland Lescure also mentioned a tax credit to accelerate depreciation for robots, particularly to help small businesses invest in automation. The Labour Ministry plans a certification programme for professional AI use, an observatory to track the technology’s effects on work and trials of new forms of dialogue about technology across roughly twenty companies and professional sectors, with support from the National Agency for the Improvement of Working Conditions.
Agathe le Berder, a member of the CGT union’s national executive committee, objected that the social-dialogue measures create no new employee rights and that business aid comes without conditions, Konsulteer reported. She also criticised the direction of Personal Training Account funding towards AI courses and argued that the plan leaves companies’ own responsibilities for developing workers’ skills insufficiently addressed.
Several labour and employer organisations have separately declared themselves ready to begin interprofessional negotiations on AI, following the Work, Employment and Pensions conference.
