Journal article: France, which is often seen as an unusual country with a rigid 35-hour working week, has experienced massive changes in its regulation of working time in recent decades, including a progressive removal of 35-hour working week laws. These changes have affected and continue to affect workplace organisation, working conditions, job creation, productivity and wages. The 35-hour working week policy represents a reduction in working time as well as a complex package that restructured French labour law and that opened up a great deal of space for social bargaining. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the evolution of working time regulation and its political roots. It discusses the studies evaluating the 35-hour working week and examines some of the basic consequences of reversing this policy since 2002. It also highlights unexplored lines of research on this topic.