The young Guinean apprentice baker Laye Fodé Traoré, 18, has been regularized and will be able to stay in France.
He was subject to a mandatory leave of the territory, which had caused a hunger strike by the baker who employs him and a strong wave of media support.
Stéphane Ravacley, the Besançon baker on hunger strike for more than a week to protest against the expulsion of his Guinean apprentice, assured AFP on Thursday that the young man's situation had been regularized, after a meeting in the prefecture of Haute-Saône.
Contacted, the Haute-Saônoise prefecture was not reachable in the early afternoon.
"Laye is regularized! And he resumes work Tuesday!", Assured Stéphane Ravacley, reached by telephone after an interview with the secretary general of the prefecture.
Stéphane Ravacley and Laye Fodé Traoré, an 18-year-old Guinean subject to an obligation to leave French territory (OQTF), were received Thursday in the prefecture of Haute-Saône.
At the announcement of his regularization, the young man "practically cried", confided his apprenticeship master.
"He thanked his boss, his educators and the French state," added Stéphane Ravacley.
"It's a great joy, a victory. Now we will also fight for the others" who are in the same case elsewhere in France, he added.
Strong mobilization in favor of the apprentice baker
Supported in France as an isolated minor, Laye Fodé Traoré did not obtain a residence permit when he reached majority.
The prefecture considered until now that the identity documents of the young man were not authentic.
But their recent validation by the Guinean Embassy, which "issued him a birth certificate", and the mobilization in favor of Laye Fodé Traoré led the prefecture to review its position, according to Stéphane Ravacley.
The petition in favor of the young baker, launched by Stéphane Ravacley, had collected more than 220,000 signatures on Tuesday.
The baker, on hunger strike for 10 days, was taken to the emergency room Tuesday after feeling unwell.
He announced that he was going to resume eating normally.
Personalities from the political, trade union, artistic or literary world, in particular, had called on Monday French President Emmanuel Macron to "help the Besançon baker on hunger strike", in a column published in the
Nouvel Observateur
.