Do you need to provide financial evidence to french government

I've just been told by someone who had friends moved to france 5 yrs ago and that they needed to provide evidence that they had at least 3 years of financial stability before they were allowed to live in france.


Is this still the case - you have to have approx 60,000 in bank or earn money through pensions, rents, other means before you can live there?????


Or is it that you have to support yourself and not claim anything from the french government for the first three years - which is fair enough - but you don't have to prove you can support yourself...


Advice needed ASAP pls.


Cheers


Christine

Christine, towards the end of your query - you asked about 'that you have to support yourself and not claim anything from the french government for the first three years'. If you were UK (I think probably EU but I only know what we did from UK) then you can get a statement from Newcastle DWP saying you have paid your NI contributions for the past 5 years and as such my understanding is that you are entitled to the same 'unemployment, maternity & pension cover' as any French Resident. We applied for these when we officially left the UK tax system a few years back and sent them to the French authority (CAF Caisse Allocations Familiale - so we could apply for my maternity & child allowances). We have since contributed into the French system and built an entitlement that way too.

I assume other EU countries have a similar procedure. Perhaps someone else knows more about this aspect with respect to CMU etc?

I too renewed my titre de sejour and now have a permanent card so no more renewals,why because everyone understands what it is and as it's free I don't have to carry an expensive passeport around.I see that from 19 janvier 2013 french driving licences will have a 15 year limitation on them.You will have untill 2033 to change your old model to the new one.The source for this information is the august 2012 edition of NOTAIRES the magazine put out by the Notaires de Bretagne

You need a UK address when changing your UK licence/updating the photo now the licences are only valid for 10 years. But there's no obligation to change it if you leave the UK for France even though the address may be obsolete... bit of a grey area that can be exploited for avoiding losing points here in France. If you're here for good then sooner or later you'll end up changing though as I had to.

You do not need to have a valid residence in the UK to hold a valid UK driving licence.
If you live abroad you cannot add your new address, your last address is the one that counts.

only obligation to change it is if you commit an offence. In practice you've got up to 10 years - uk licences need to be changed every ten years and at that point if you have no valid UK address, you'll be forced to change it for a French one for practical reasons!

Yes Finn, in theory, and there's far more chance with road side controls/speed traps. The radar ones are impersonal and so nothing happens if you pay the fine and give your UK licence number. All in the dim and distant past now - I get caught and lose points the same as the rest of 'em now :-(

As long as one has a valid residence address in the UK, of course. We don't so we exchanged our UK for a French licence. Very straightforward. Unfortunately, you then are subject to the points system!

No, that's exactly how it works Finn. I managed to avoid points on several occasions, technically you are supposed to change as soon as you commit an offence, as I'm sure you are more than aware of. I didn't and kept going until I was "invited" to the local gendarmerie where they made me go to the préfecture and exchange my UK licence for a French one. I think I worked out that I saved losing about 5 points over 4 or 5 years.

Our replies crossed - exactly, they can insist that you change your licence, you are duty bound to do so so they can remove the points, but in practice most don't bother which was my case until a couple of years ago!

Not at all. At the moment that still works and until the systems are centralised, it will probably continue to do so.

Yes Christine, it's a French driving licence but you don't need to change your UK one until you commit an offence or it's up for renewal. You're better off keeping the UK one for as long as possible as you can avoid the French points system that way ;-)

You can only keep your UK driving licence as long as the photo is in date, that is if you want to go back to UK with your car. Driving with an out of date photo in your licence incurs a hefty fine!!
It is a fairly simple to change to a French permis

My reply at the time was "A good thing I'm not South American, or I'd be worried!" In the end, they had to send the card to Bristowl!!!

Hahaha Guy. My renewal in Berlin was an orderly German queue job. After two previous visits with five year spaces, the woman supervising the desk officers said words to the effect of 'It's him already, I thought he had a few eeks left'. Given they had upward of 10,000 Turkish migrants alone per year getting new or renewing existing permissions, let alone all the rest, it was totally inconceivable she could remember me. Better than a joke about being shot though.

This discussion about a carte de sejour reminds me about the time I moved from Belgium to the UK, Cornwall to be exact. Being used to the Belgian intrusive system, I thought I'd better tell the Home Office I was now resident in their country. They duly sent me a kind of identity card declaring me an 'alien', and told me to go and get it stamped at the local police station. Off I went to Truro, where there's two policemen present, one dealing with me at the counter, the other in a corner typing with two fingers on one of those old typewriters (this was in 1980). The first one looks puzzled at the card and says, "never seen one of those before". He turns to his colleague and asks "what shall I do with him?", whereupon - without looking up - the typing cop says in the driest way possible, "just take him round the back and shoot him." Enough to make me fall in love with the place, if I hadn't been already!!

I've just remembered I have my Aufenthaltsgenehmigung for an indefinite period which I got when I made the third renewal of the five year one in Berlin. It's the same as the French Carte de Sejour, a little folded card about the same size as my mutuelle card, although my picture 30 years ago may be a wee bitty misleading. I'll try using that instead of my passport just to see - might be fun!

Christine, hi. The question you asked about what is a Carte de Sejour. My wife (French) has a Carte Nationale d'Identité , I have a Carte de Sejour (official name Titre de Sejour) which is the same thing for foreigners. Having lived in France on and off since 1962 I'm so used to having it that it's second nature. And it's very easy to obtain these days if you're an EU citizen, not like back in the 60s in Paris where you could spend days queuing at the Paris Préfecture just to get to see someone who gave you the forms to fill out. You then had to go back with the forms and proof of residence/income etc, queue another few days only to be told something "vital" was missing from the file. It took months rather than weeks.

The guy at the Lozere prefecture was none too keen to renew my carte ("you know you don't need this...") because it meant he'd have to do a bit of work. But I told him what I've said here, that so many people seem to have or to give themselves the right to ask for ID that I just find it's useful to have it. Has more of an effect than my driving licence. Not only that, it replaces your passport in EU countries. I once forgot my passport on a trip to the UK and even there immigration accepted it.

As for proof of income, I just showed him the letter my pension fund sends me each year telling me how much they've declared to the tax people here.

@ Valerie -- You're lucky. Try writing a cheque in a shop. They'll always ask for ID and, if it's over a certain sum. will usually ask for two different documents (passport and driving licence for example).

@Andrew Sure, I could use my driving licence but I just find it easier to show the carte and as I just said, I've had one on and off for so long I'd feel naked without it!

They still exist, Valerie. The only difference is that as an EU citizen you're not obliged to have one.

Don't worry about it - hope you've sorted out your clients - i'm sure compaining customers are very stressful and I have all of that to look forward to....

C

reading your reply again...I can see that I have not read your comments carefuly...SORRY I have jumped the gun...been busy with clients...WHO HAVE COMPLAINED....about a restaurant where they had a bad experience. Was on my list.

Oh dear. Chambre d hote and rentals are not so easy

Hopefuly the Australians will love our French restaurants...

they could