In France, you normally can't apply for a thesis without funding (it may vary on field though). And the moment you have funding that makes you an employee, with

In France, you normally can't apply for a thesis without funding (it may vary on field though). And the moment you have funding that makes you an employee, with the protections accorded. Since most theses are funded using public money, you become a state employee with all the additional protections that implies. That said, PhD students (and researchers) are still poorly paid (though PhD stipends are being raised over the next few years), and though France has a legal 35 hour work week, informal pressure of academia means that tends to be thrown out the window. There are legal requirements on graduate schools that help protect students from abusive advisors or other abuse within their laboratories, of course since the research world is small, it remains to see how effective they can be.