Can anyone tell me how you go about getting a french passport and what documents you need to do this? We were told, by an englishman that we met at the local Impot office, that they are cheaper than British passports and as we don’t use them often we want to change to french. One of my children has a current British passport, due to be renewed later this year, but my little girl’s, aged 5, has expired…
I married my first husband in London in 1966 and the law then made me a french citizen and of course you never need to give up your british nationality.French law changed in 1972 making it much longer to become french by marrage.Funny thing is that during 3 years in the early seventies my 4 children who nare all french were able to get dual nationality…The english law he since changed.Actually I don’t know why I bothered as they don’t have any connections with the U.K. As they never had any family there as my folks lived in Cape Town
@ Jane - after all that time are you a french national? How did you get two passports? This is getting more complicated by the comment!!! 
well I’ve been here fore 46 years now and I have british and french passports
I thought I saw somewhere that there is a time limit on how long you can hold a UK passport if you are British but are resident in France, I think it was 15 years. Then you have to get a French one. Surely not!!! Has nyone else heard this. PS This is a great site for info for us expats.
If you child is entitled to a french passport ( ie if one of her parents is french) then you’ll need 2 ID pictures, her birth certificat, your ID, a recent proof of address, a 17euros Timbre Fiscal , and the application form, then you need to take an apointment to your local commisariat (they are the ones dealing with passport applications now, and not the Mairie anymore). I’ve just renewed my son’s passport this way, and it was quite straightforward. Regards
@ Jayne - you will need to get the back of the kids photos signed. I forgot to do that but they didn’t check which is really really bad! Luckily no one wanted to child traffic my son - wonder why!!
Thanks Peta and Jacqui - I realise now that we were all given false information by the english bloke (just goes to show you shouldn’t believe everything!) No probs we’ll just renew, as normal, our British passports when they are due. Do you know if it’s easy to renew a child’s passport if has already expired (she’s never been out of France)?
You can apply for ‘naturalisation’ but believe me, it’s certainly not cheap by the time you have translated the endless documents needed to prove who you are (we’re in the process of doing it). It’s true that children can’t apply until they are 16, however their parents can, and you can bundle the children’s applications up with the adults. We’ve been told it typically takes between 18-24 months.
The first question would be are you French Jayne? If not, then you have no entitlement to a French passport. Even if your children were born in France (to non-French parents) they have no entitlement either until they reach age 16 when they can choose their nationality.
Here's a link that should give you all the info you need - Passeport
Good luck