Hello,
I am sorry I am confused by one topic, I lived in the Paris region for fifteen years before having to return to the UK for family reasons. My question ( and confusion ) is as a pensioner what is the minimum income I have to receive as a pensioner to live in France legally.
I would hope you can live anywhere, legally⊠
⊠so long as you are not a drain on the host nation⊠
Perhaps you mean the âmimimumâ that folk talk about needing to be able to prove, when applying for C d Sejour or Permanent Residency⊠???
I think the sum 818 ⏠per month for a couple without childrenâŠhas been found in the various government sites⊠but others will click in with more info I am sureâŠ
Currently you can exercise your EU freedom of movement and live in France even if you only have tuppence. BUT you will not qualify for entry into the health system, and post Brexit may have problems as you will not be eligible for a carte de sejour. However to achieve full residence status with access to health system if you are over 65 this is the level of income you need
Le caractĂšre suffisant de vos ressources est apprĂ©ciĂ© en tenant compte de votre situation personnelle. Dans tous les cas, lâadministration ne peut pas exiger que vos ressources dĂ©passent les montants suivants par mois :
Ressources suffisantes
Si vous vivez seul(e)
833,20 âŹ
Si vous vivez en couple
1 293,54 âŹ
La charge que vous pouvez reprĂ©senter pour le systĂšme dâassistance sociale est Ă©valuĂ©e au regard des aides sociales (accordĂ©es sans contrepartie de cotisations) qui vous ont Ă©tĂ© versĂ©es, de la nature de vos difficultĂ©s et la durĂ©e de votre sĂ©jour en France.
Thank you, yes it was the Permanent Residency I had in mind.
1 Like
Many thanks Jane thats food for thought. I have a Carte Vitale and still have a Carte de Sejour although its long expired, but as you suggest with Bretix looming things could change.
Catch 22, you canât reside in France unless you have health cover. Tuppence wonât get you into the health system or pay for private cover.
But arenât there a lot of UK immigrants who do just that, and have been doing for years? Live here, but pretend itâs a second home and they arenât really resident. So donât pay into health system, donât change the carte gris on their car, donât pay income tax etc etc.
Doubtless, but post Brexit they might find themselves out on a limb.
There are but they are not resident in a stable manner and as Paul says will suffer if they need to prove residency.
How will they get found out? You will still be able to visit France, so what will stop people just buying a standard tourist visa - or whatever system is put in place - and carrying on as they do now? As long as people pay taxe fonc & taxe dâhab will anyone be bothered?
Iâm not suggesting that I support this, as I donât approve & particularly donât approve of uninsured cars, but I donât quite see how it would be stopped easily.
For one thing, even if visas are waived for tourist stays of < 90 days we will find our passports being stamped on entry, so the authorities will be able to simply to check when you entered the country by looking in your passport.
Thatâs fine if they will be happy to carry on as second home owners but once Britain leaves the EU it will probably become harder to play the system. My point is that there are people who have been resident in France for a long time without paying taxes here or entering the health system. If after Brexit they want to prove x years of stable residence they simply wonât be able to do so. I know several families who spend far more than six months in France but canât be bothered to be considered resident and do all those annoying things like joining the health service, they have an EHIC card; completing a French tax return, they pay their taxes in the U.K. or importing their cars into and registering them in France, they can get the new MOT done while theyâre back for Christmas and the January sales. Either now or after Brexit they will have to make up their minds about where they are actually resident.
More than that if they continue to try to live under the radar they will definitely be in the country illegally and it will be relatively easy to prove that they have outstayed a tourist visa.
At present I think that they are not in the country illegally (given freedom of movement) but are probably in breach of French and UK tax laws by not correctly declaring their country of residence. As you say they are not going to be able to demonstrate âstableâ residence for CdS purposes.
One further thought is that it, in the modern world, it will probably be easy enough to check, should the French authorities wish to do so - the tax system knows where you pay your TdH and TdF and whether you are resident for tax purposes so a list of maisons secondaires with non-tax-resident owners is a database query. That list will also yield the primary addressess of the owners so easy to filter out non-EU nationals
Once entry and exit is recorded, assuming the data can be linked1,, a list of 2nd home owners from non-EU countries who entered > 90 days ago would not be that difficult.
1] Assume that it can, this is the 21st century, after all.
I think your phrase âshould the french authorities wish to do soâ is key. We all know the french mania for administration, but despite that they are one of the few/the only EU country who have not required non-native EU residents to register their prescence. So I wonder whether they will bother to chase people who are under the radar, certainly to start with?
After all, itâs very easy to check whether a UK registered car thatâs ever present in your village is taxed & insured - but the gendarmes donât. We were in a village in the Pyrenees in the spring and I was surprised at the number of UK reg cars as it wasnât tourist time. So I just looked up a few out of curiosity - took all of 10 seconds - and many of them were completely illegal.
Agree totally that it will require that the French authorities wish to chase up on it - but given that they should be paying tax in France there might be quite an incentive for them to do so post B-Day.
As for the cars, yes it is probably possible but would be leg-work for the Gendarmes especially as any vehicle in that situation is not going to be registered against a French address so actually proving ownership might not be straightforward and would need to be done through official channels, not just the public DVLA website.
Yep⊠DVLA website ⊠it is so easy to see what folk are up to.
some cars even have the âexportâ marker on their DVLA dossier, yet still run around France on UK platesâŠyear in, year outâŠjust below the radar⊠ooooops
Have to say that we are below that level ⊠with economies itâs possible to live confortably !
1 Like
Doable, but tight! But how do you deal with healthcare, or have you been here over 5 years and have permanent residency so you can be in CMU-C?
I have to wonder if that income would be acceptable if you were having to pay for rent? Rents can be low, so maybe itâs moot and the income would include what it costs for rent?
Hmmmm. The more I think about this, the more I feel one who is trying to reside in Paris on this minimum pension amount, would end up being a burden on France, if that is the actual income and one has no additional, and is having to use up a significant part of that amount to pay rent.
Then again, the original question was about being âlegalâ which I interpreted as having acceptable qualifications for France to approve one to become a resident and therefore in the system.
That does beg the question about realistic income, which seems to be a different thing entirely. Yet, why would that be different? My thought is that the French government is basing its qualification requirements on realistic living expenses; but perhaps I have misunderstood.