Have any EU, non-French, national citizens out there applied for a French passport and care to share their experiences?
Hi
I have french nationality and English. The process of obtaining a french passport was quite straightforward because I am married to a frenchman and have been for twelve years. I qualified on this basis plus the fact I have been married for over five years. You need a lot of certificates which need to be translated by an 'expert' translator ie one recognised as qualified. I went to the court instance for the forms and they gave me a list of the things I needed to obtain. Let me know if you want further détails and I will try and remember and send them over.
Good luck
Fiona
Thank you Andrew for the link and thank you Ben for the advice. Your words about being patient, treating your contacts with courtesy and not getting upset ring so true in so many situations when dealing with French bureaucracy. However, we’ve found that if you do, things normally start happening when they’re good and ready to …!
Do you know how good your level of French has to be? Mine’s not bad but my husband’s is conversational.
Hi Carol
I've done the deed and became a French/Dutch citizen about 2 years ago. Makes life a lot easier when wanting to do business over here.
After hearing all those horror-stories about naturalization, the tons of documents, certified / authenticated copies to provide, mis-matches between the the authorities of your current country and those of France, same questions asked/ requests to be done over and over again, different standards as to what to provide, the French: "I don't care what the law says, in this Préfecture we want all that additional info" but finally not being asked a bribe I decided to face the french civil service.
But in the end it depends a lot on 2 factors: the department you live in i.e. the Préfecture that will handle your case and own preparations.
The first you can't influence obviously. You are dependent on the qualities and good will of the people that will be handling your "dossier".
The second is all in your hands. Start with the local mairie and ask questions about the procedure, specific items to be provided etc. Then go to the préfecture (not the sous-prefecture, they normally don't handle these cases) and basically ask the same questions. Ask for a conclusive list of items to provide (the link Andrew gave is excellent, but there are local varieties) and don't miss out on any of them when filing your dossier. Ask for an estimate of the time needed to process your dossier. Try to establish a good relationship with the person that is your contact at the prefecture.
After submitting the dossier, be patient, don't start to harass them when things take a little longer or you need to file some document that they forgot to ask you in the first place. Start to ask questions about the planning when the initial date given is overdue...... And be patient, very patient. Normally your life won't depend on being a French citizen or not
In my case (Préfecture Angoulême) the whole process took 10 months, in which I effectively provided the entire dossier twice, had to contact services in the Netherlands to speed-up the case and have had 6 visits to the préfecture. But the lady who was my contact was very helpful and apologizing when the back office screwed up once again. In fact the request was processed quicker then they do in the Netherlands, come to think of it.
So if you take the dive into the deepest of French "services publiques" be patient, treat your contacts with courtesy and don't get upset.
you'll have to go through the naturalisation process first, then apply for a passport if you get French nationality. It takes months see here for more info ;-)