French authorities rejected a nurse’s application to be naturalised, arguing that she works too much.
The prefecture in Val-de-Marne, near Paris, denied her application in June stating that she is “in breach of working time regulations”.
Widely shared on social media, the official letter — which the prefecture confirmed as legitimate to Euronews — details that on top of her job in a clinic, the nurse has also picked up a monthly average of 119 hours of shift work in two other medical institutions.
“You thus accumulate three jobs for a monthly duration of 271 working hours,” it states.
French law stipulates that employees cannot work over 48 hours in one week or a weekly average of 44 hours over a 12-week period.
For instance, an employee working 48 hours a week for 6 weeks and then 40 hours for the following six weeks, will have respected the law as that averages to a weekly 44 hours over 12 weeks.
A spokesperson for the prefecture told Euronews that her application has been postponed for two years “to give her time to comply with the legislation.”
[b]’Take my nationality away'[/b]
The decision has been widely condemned on social media, with centrist lawmaker Jean-Christophe Lagarde writing on Twitter: “In our country, the staunchest racists say foreigners do not work. But the State can do that?”
Union leader Jerome Marty, a doctor, also voiced his stupefaction at the decision.
“I work 60 to 70 hours a week like countless doctors, nurses…and I’m not even speaking of the interns who work up to 80 to 90 hours a week,” he wrote on Twitter
“Take my nationality away,” he added.
According to Eurostat, EU employees spent an average of 40.3 hours per week in their main jobs in 2016.
Full-time employees in the UK were found to spend the highest number of hours per week at their main job (42.3 hours) while French and Dutch workers spent a weekly average of 39.0 hours — just slightly above the EU’s shortest work week recorded in Italy with 38.8 hours.
Source: Euro News
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