The European Union countries, including France, have decided to further harmonise their concept and measu-rement of unemployment. These countries were already using common criteria recommended by the International Labour Organization in 1982 to measure unemployment and employment. However, this reading concealed certain differences. The new European Regulation No. 1897/2000 seeks to smooth out these differences. It generates a more res-trictive ILO unemployment measurement than that traditionally applied by France. Two interpretations of ILO unemployment will hence coexist: the traditional French interpretation, which will be maintained to preserve the continuity of series available since 1975, and the new harmonised EU interpretation, which will take effect for France starting with the results of the first quarter of 2003. This article draws on the most recent annual Employment Surveys to make a detailed analysis of the differences between these two concepts. They concern two specific unemployment boundaries: the unemployed whose only form of job seeking is being registered with the public employment office (the ANPE in France) and the unemployed who have found a job due to start in three or more months' time.