There’s been a fair bit of confusion surrounding this new legislation - I was unaware of it until fairly recently so I thought it might be useful to clarify.
Since January 15 2017, if you child lives in France, is under 18 and is travelling abroad alone, whether on a school trip or to see family in the UK, you now need to complete “une attestation de sortie du territoire” or AST - in other words, authorization for your child to leave the country. If you as parents are EU citizens, as well as his / her passport and the authorisation, your child will also need a copy of the parent’s (who has signed the form) passport or ID card.
The authorisation form in question is Cerfa n°15646*01
and you can download it here.
If your child is French but normally lives abroad, he or she will NOT need to produce the form when they leave France. This is also the case for a non-French resident and non French national child when they are visiting France.
So, if your grandchildren are flying over alone from the UK where they live to visit you these holidays, they do NOT need to carry the form. If your grandchildren who normally live with you in the Dordogne are flying back to the UK, they WILL need to carry the form.
Hope this clears things up for everyone and happy form filling!
My 10 year old son is going to the UK with the school in June. He’s teacher has asked us to complete the form mentioned above and include a photo copy of my passport. They also said that because we are all british citizens (son was born in France but has British passport as wasn’t allowed French citizenship until he reaches 18 years old because we he’s parents are both a British) we need to produce our carte de sejours so he prove he has the right to renter France? I’ve never heard of this??? Does anyone know of anything like this is necessary?
It doesn’t say anything about that on the gouv.fr site. My tactic is always to ask the person concerned to provide a link to the appropriate piece of legislation . Normally stops these kind of ‘Chinese whispers’ in their tracks.
Keep us posted?
Cx
My son flew out yesterday with Ryanair and I gave him the duly completed form and copy of my passport but nobody looked at it. The Ryanair check in lady even laughed when he offered it. Still, better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it…