Things have changed Grahame. I will give you a clue, it’s to do with something beginning with B.
And if you’d read my message the difficulties started way before Brexit and have become much worse now.
Dan, meant to mention.
I am well aware of Brexit having been personally involved in the campaign since 2014.
An involvment that has involved taking the UK government to court, resulted in threats to myself and my family and has cost us many thousands of pounds that we can ill-afford.
Did we?
I don’t think you could ever march into CPAM and say “Give me a carte vitale because I am entitled to one unless you prove I’m not”.
EU citizens are entitled to live here provided they meet the conditions for freedom of movement. If you don’t meet them you’re not entitled to anything; however, if nobody checks, it’s easy for people to get away with doing things that technically they are not entitled to do. If you do meet the criteria, there is no question of France proving you don’t - it will rubber stamp your rights. I wouldn’t say the regime is changing, just, there will be more checks and it will be less open to abuse.
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I don’t understand. As I see it British Citizens did not need a CdS to reside in France but that will change once Brexit happens. At the moment the immediate future is unclear but the French authorities have made preparations to streamline the application for CdS that all British Citizens currently legally resident in France will need once Brexit has happened. They have even made it clear that Britons who are resident in France at a given date but do not yet meet the five years residency requirement for a permanent CdS will be issued with a temporary card and allowed to stay in France to achieve the five years. All in all France seems to be doing a lot to help British Citizens. It is also easy to see that before Brexit no CdS was required but afterwards it will be.
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We do indeed have a declaritive regime for our right to reside in France for so long as the UK is a member state of the EU.
We have lived in France for over 20 years and have only had to produce, passport, proof of address and occasionally a birth certificate in order to prove our entitlement to be here, set up a business, etc.
Despite being legally resident in France for 20 plus years we now have to provide bank statements, French tax returns, proof of continued residency in France for at leats 5 years. We have to constitute a dossier rather than simply declare we are entitled.
Please explain because I don’t know what you mean by this.
We had to meet certain criteria. And if we did, we automatically had certain rights.
That’s not the same as a declarative regime, as I understand it, because there was no need to declare anything to anyone.
As EU citizens we only had to declare we were entitled to reside here, at the most producing a passport, proof of residence and occasional a birth certificate was required. That was a declaritive regime.
Despite having lived here for 20 plus years without being aburden on the French system, indeed having paid into the French system. we now need to supply, in addition to the aforementioned documents, bank statements, French tax returns, proof of residence for at least 5 years. That is a constitutive regime.
The difference between the two system is very clear.
What you are being asked to prove is very straightforward. It is a hurdle already crossed by thousands if not tens of thousands of Britons. The proof that you have to provide is a reflection of your everyday life over the past few years in the form of bank statements and tax returns. Nothing that shouldn’t be easy to compile. For someone in your position it really is just a rubber stamp that’s needed. France has streamlined the system for British citizens and are on your side, the British public voted for Brexit and all that means for people in your position. Why are you blaming France?
PS I wrote my post before your posted the one above. I still don’t get your problem. You claim that you understand Brexit but don’t seem to understand that your status is going to change as a result of it.
But we didn’t. We had the automatic right because the EU gave it to us. All we did was exercise that right. We didn’t have to declare it to anyone unless they asked. And if they did ask, then as you say we had to prove it by showing a passport and/or etc - a simple declaration wouldn’t have been sufficient. Setting up a business, opening rights with CAF, opening rights with CPAM, all these things required documentary evidence. I can’t think of any instance where “declaring that you were entitled to reside here” was appropriate. Either there was no need to even declare it, or you had to prove it.
Who did you ever declare to, that you were entitled to reside here, and they took your word for it without asking for proof?
I am not being asked to provide anything other than my experience.
I do NOT blame France just point out that they are not perfect and have made things very much more difficult by shifting from a a very relaxed declariroty process to a very restrictave constituative process,
In my opinion you are misreading the situation, France is doing the minimum that they HAVE to do because YOUR situation is changing.
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I still don’t see how you support your claim that it was a declarative process, I asked for an instance in your experience where you were required to simply declare that you were resident, and it carried any weight.
We had automatic rights, which in some situations we were required to prove. After Brexit, being a Brit no longer equates to having automatic rights.
No matter how relaxed a state is, it’s never going to simply take somebody’s word for it that they have the right to be there. Most foncionnaires couldn’t tell a British accent from an Australian or an American. And let’s face it, not everybody is honest.
We haven’t changed the goalposts, the government in Westminster has.
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The French authorities have so far been pretty magnanimous to Brits given the rhetoric coming out of Westminster. Even introduced a spanking new online application system just for Brits. Admittedly, if it works, it’ll probably be rolled out more generally, but seems unjustified to say that we are having life made difficult for us, considering we about to be come a 3rd party nation.
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