Is it possible to transfer your training rights to a loved one?

Donations of Personal Training Account (CPF) rights, such as donations of leave or RTT, are not yet possible under French law.

Another participation. The government announced on Monday 19 February that employees who want to use their Personal Training Account (CPF) will be required to pay a “flat rate contribution” of around 10% from this year. So training will no longer be covered 100%. Only job seekers will be exempted from this remaining charge.

Established since 2015, CPF is a tool for employees to assert their rights to training. Each year, 500 euros are allocated to the employee’s account if they are full-time. These rights can be exercised immediately or accumulated up to 5,000 euros. CPF concerns all employees and even those who are retiring soon.

And certainly, at full-rate retirement, training rights freeze. However, they are not in the event of retirement with a lower rate, the site moncompteformation.gouv.fr suggests. The institutes also advise withdrawing money into your CPF account before retirement, so that it can be accessed even if the training starts after retirement, the site cpf-info.com points out.

Right to “personal” training

Hence the training rights present on CPF are unattainable. And as its name implies, the account is “personal”: rights cannot be transferred to relatives. You won’t be able to give your rights, for example, to your grandchildren so they can get their driver’s license, nor help your daughter or son acquire new skills as part of a job search. Spouse is also excluded from such possibility.

An observation projected in 2021 Les Républiques MP Valérie Bazin-Malgras, who presented a bill to the Social Affairs Committee with the aim of allowing the transfer of rights registered on personal training accounts between account holders. A measure “Both Justice and Efficiency”, MP L.R. With this law, any employee could transfer all or part of the rights registered on their CPF to another account holder. Same right as holiday donation or RTT. “It was a real measure of purchasing power.”Valérie Bazin-Malgras explains to franceinfo. “For example, in my constituency, parents informed me about their son’s heavy goods vehicle license saying that he was retiring and wanted to transfer the rights to his personal training account”MP says.

The text was rejected in committee. CPF “Includes allowing everyone to grow and learn throughout their professional lives”Recalled LREM deputy Thierry Michelson in 2021. “This is an individual right, not something that can be transferred to another person.” But for MP LR, “A worker who worked to get this right to training loses it completely after retirement. This is not normal.”

Valéry Bazin-Malgras hopes to be able to defend the measure again in the Assembly and possibly resubmit the bill during the parliamentary framework.

“The financial capacity of the system does not allow it”

This “new” right does not seem to have been demanded by the unions for the moment. Yvan Ricordo, Deputy Secretary General of the CFDT, recalls that the personal training account is a shared system. An employee does not contribute to augment his CPF: “It’s not something that can be taken out of an employee’s payslip and will be capitalized.” For a trade unionist, it is difficult to bequeath something that does not correspond to an inheritance. “When you have a time savings account, you put your own vacation days into the account and it’s directly yours.That explains. Vocational training method is completely different. You have credit that runs where it’s a collective fund that feeds the system.”

Another difficulty, because the possibility to bequeath rights on personal training accounts is not possible “The financial capacity of the system does not allow it”Ivan Ricordo underlines: “The system is already at a loss, if such legislation were ever passed, we would have to explain how we would finance this legislation.” Trade unionists deplore the “residual burden” that the government seeks to impose on training, particularly because of the cost to workers: “If we balance at least 10%, employees with the most modest incomes will choose to stop going to training. However, it is those who have the most fragile careers who should train as a priority.”