Are you registered with France Travail and planning to set up your business in another European country? The project is feasible, but beware: not all your rights are necessarily transferable abroad.
In particular, ARCE (Aide à la Reprise ou à la Création d’Entreprise), which enables you to receive part of your unemployment benefit in the form of a lump sum, is only available to jobseekers resident in France. It cannot be granted if you are already receiving ARE (Allocation de Retour à l’Emploi) while residing in another EU Member State. Payment of this assistance is therefore conditional on your residence in France.
What’s more, if you have received your first ARCE payment in France, the second will not be paid if, on the due date, you have left the country to take up residence elsewhere in Europe. Your entitlement to this aid is therefore interrupted if you change your place of residence outside France.
That said, you will not be asked to repay any part of the ARCE already paid if your departure abroad took place after the grant was awarded. There is one exception, however: if you had already left France at the time of application and obtained the aid on the basis of inaccurate information, recovery may be initiated.
Finally, it should be noted that recipients of ACCRE-ASS (exemption from social security contributions for business start-ups) cannot claim continued unemployment benefit in another Member State. In this case too, entitlements cannot be cumulated at European level.
For more information, visit the website of our partner Frontaliers Grand Est
