Customs car stickers

It’s no more relevant to that era than the label with the number of passengers in the car.

It’s not even a star, it’s a yellow circle with EU stars inside it, as in the photo posted above.

Well if said car is being used in France by a permanent resident, who hasn’t declared it as part of their importation of personal effects when becoming resident, and hasn’t also registered it in France and got French plates, then they have every right to do so.

If that’s what the system is aimed at doing, there’s no spurious “money making exercise” just enforcing laws that some people are ignoring. It’s not a civil liberties issue as far as I can tell on the limited evidence available at the moment.

Yellow and Stars then? I haven’t even seen this Mark and yet I got it right.

Rather worrying :slight_smile:

Ok so not a right wing plot on this occasion phew

Of course having a CdS does not necessarily mean that you are a permanent resident of France. It may mean you have the right to live in France should you so wish, but in fact you currently reside in the UK.

I am thinking for instance of holders of 10 year WARP cards who may have moved back to the UK in the last couple of years.

I trust the officers deal with each situation individually and do not “assume”.

Judging from the many times I’ve had dealings with “people in authority”… if one is polite and answers questions/has documents to hand… things have been dealt with professionally and pleasantly.

1 Like

But wheres the fun in that :wink:

1 Like

Actually, I’ve had some quite fun conversations with Customs Officers, CRS Officers et al over the years. Once we’ve got past the polite questioning that is… :rofl:

1 Like

The sand filter I brought over and got asked “what is that?” A bombe I replied, the lady officer said I was very naughty :face_with_hand_over_mouth: her male colleague was shocked and confused, well its bombe shaped as the french would call anything from a desert to actual munitions

Don’t wait up for my report people. We’ll be driving home as soon as we get on French soil, so my much anticipated filing will be on Monday.

I’m not sure I can take the pressure of fame :flushed:

2 Likes

Well, it’s all very mysterious…

The now infamous EU sticker seemed to make zero difference to anybody driving off the ferry at Ouistreham at 22.00 last night (Sunday 13/05/2025).

There was only one two sided passport/douane booth open, so everything was forced into two randomly populated lanes. We showed our passports & CdS/TdSs & that was that.

There was zero evidence of any further checking beyond that control point, even though there is a big area at that port for pulling vehicles over before they finally exit.

I’m sorry that I can’t describe witnessing arguments between irate Brits & customs officials whilst their cars were impounded & crushed at the roadside, but there it is…

P.S. The check-in person at Portsmouth made no mention of the sticker when handing over the dangly pass. He had thanked us for mentioning that we had an electric vehicle, as the sign on the booth requests, but there was no sticker offered for that (as has happened previously) & no special treatment on the boat (as usual).

5 Likes

Perhaps the sticker is just a simple way of indicating which lane to use when entering France i.e. EU lane or non-EU lane? CDS holders having the advantage over tourist Brits?

I imagine that pretty much everything is filmed/ANPR at ports. Maybe some sort of trial run, and looking for repeat “offenders”.

Sounds logical. Perhaps they’ll do the morning and afternoon arrivals first - sounds like the Douanes had gone home!

Reminds me of the Customs bods at Provo airport in Turks & Caicos - if you wanted to do a little light smuggling (avoiding the 33% import duty on things like camera lenses), it was best to arrive on the 9.30pm from Miami. The customs dudes and dudettes were wanting to go home by then, so if you baffled them with an itemised list and a wad of receipts for low value stuff (under the $400 allowance in total) they would wave you through. :smiley:

There were no specific lanes in use at Ouistreham last night, 13/04/2025.

Also I’ve never seen specific EU lane/s there for vehicles, ever. That’s not to say that there haven’t been at some point, but never in my experience.

Looking at the link the Caen ring road is not included it’s territory within the ring.

L’intérieur du périphérique a été retenu comme périmètre de cette ZFE-m.

Stickers 0 to 5 are permitted so only unclassified vehicles are restricted.

et de limiter l’accès du périmètre défini aux véhicules non classés.

For when EES finally comes into force? They will then possibly have different queues for those who don’t need to register (including French residents as well as EU citizens) and those that do.

Dont join the queue for Cds but UK car :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

Could be linked to the new entry exit system they are bringing in. One Channel port is seemingly trialing this EE system first. And one think that has been highlighted is will UK passport holders, living in France with CdS, have to go through the EU gates, or be held up with all others, most of whom have to go through the fingerprint etc identity checks.

1 Like