On April 3, the Paris Court of Appeal ordered Twitter France to pay nearly €90,000 to a former employee, ruling that she had been subjected to an unfair dismissal and moral harassment. This significant penalty, which includes €58,000 in damages, is significant: The decision, which Le Monde has seen, establishes that the numerous aggressive emails sent by Elon Musk to the social network's employees can constitute moral harassment under French law.

When the CEO of Tesla took control of Twitter at the end of October 2022, one of the employees at the company's French office, Ms. G., was on maternity leave. She received an email in her personal inbox informing her that her position was threatened by the cost-cutting plan decided by the new CEO. She then received, like all the group's employees, a series of "threatening emails" signed by Musk, sometimes in the middle of the night in Paris time, as stated in the court ruling.

These messages notably demanded employees to commit to doubling their efforts, with several requiring a response within 24 hours under threat of dismissal. In some cases, access to Twitter's internal tools was even necessary to respond; on maternity leave without access to her work computer, Ms. G. had to contact the human resources department to do so.

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