To address the Covid-19 epidemic, the Ordonnance n°2020-389 of 1 April 2020, as modified by Ordonnance n°2020-560 of 13 May 2020, remodels the calendar of professional elections within companies, whether in progress or forthcoming. It deals with three different situations:

1)If the electoral process was initiated before the 3 April 2020 (date of entry into force of the Ordonnance)

This process is retroactively suspended starting from the 12 March and until the 31 August 2020. If electoral formalities have been accomplished after the 12 March 2020, the electoral process is suspended from the latest date on which these formalities have been accomplished.

This suspension impacts the time periods to:

• Inform the employees and the unions of the organisation of the elections (even if the elections result from the demand of an employee or of a union),
• Invite the unions to negotiate the pre-electoral agreement,
• Organise the first round,
• Communicate to the unions the copy of the minutes of the elections results,
• Proceed to a second vote, if need be. If the electoral process has been suspended between the date of the first and of the second round, this suspension has no impact on the regularity of the first round. In the same way, if the first and the second round of the elections happened between the 12 March and the 3 April 2020, the suspension of the electoral process has no impact on the validity of the two rounds,
• Seizing of the administration or the judge of eventual contestations. The period to seize the administration or the judge on an eventual challenge and the period to appeal are also suspended.

It should be underlined that the conditions for voting and eligibility are appreciated at the date of organisation of each round of the election. In case of postponement of the vote, these conditions will be assessed at the effective date of the vote.

The time periods and the electoral process will start running again from 1 September 2020.

2)If the process was to be initiated before 3 April 2020 (but the employer did not initiate it) or between 3 April 2020 and 31 August 2020 for the following reasons:

• Threshold of at least 11 employees for 12 consecutive months reached (Article L. 2311-2 of the French Labour Code),
• Request of organisation of elections by an employee or a union (Article L. 2314-8 of the French Labour Code),
• Partial elections (Article L. 2314-10 of the French Labour Code).

In these cases, the electoral process must be implemented on a date chosen by the employer between the 24 May 2020 and the 31 August 2020 included. The new date may not be set before the date on which the employer was to implement this process.

3)The specific case of partial elections

In principle, partial elections have to be organised if an electoral college of the Comité social et économique (CSE) is no longer represented, or if the number of full members of the employee delegation of the CSE has been reduced by half or more (Article L. 2314-10 of the French Labour Code).

By way of derogation to this rule, if the suspension of partial elections intervenes less of 6 months before the end of the ongoing mandates, the employer is not under the duty to organise such partial elections. It is irrelevant whether an electoral process has been initiated prior to the suspension.