Hello everyone I am hoping to find some answers about my Cds application from you folks if possible.
My application was submitted in October 2022 via the online portal and I received the receipt straight afterwards. So far so good! Then we had a very long 11 month wait and were asked to again provide proof of sufficient funds and proof of private medical insurance. We supplied this information straight away and now 6 months later have had no update at all. I have a couple of questions that hopefully someone may to answer.
Is this a normal time to wait?
On www.demarches-simplifiees.fr/ our case still shows as ‘in progress’ is there a maximum time limit until this changes?
I have sent an email through the application portal asking for an update. Apart from this is there anything else I can do apart from just wait?
Thanks in advance if you can help at all I’m at my wits end at the moment.
Do you mind me asking which Prefecture this is?
Another spouse of an EU national was complaining recently on the forum about the Limoges prefecture issuing them with a 1-year permit when it should have been 5 years.
And here in Strasbourg retiring colleagues have had no end of problems with the Prefecture.
Welcome. This must be very frustrating for you both. I attach the wording from the relevant EU regulations which states that the CdS must be delivered within six months. If you felt it appropriate when you next follow up, you could attach the paragraph and respectfully ask for confirmation that your claim is being prioritised, given the lengthy delay. It might also be worth asking if your Mairie has a backdoor route to contact the Prefecture. Although the application is made on the central portal, my understanding is that the actual processing of the CdS is still done behind the scenes by your local Prefecture, hence the suggestion of approaching your Mairie to see if they can escalate your case to somebody they know in the Prefecture.
The problem with the set out times scale is that there is no real sanctions if préfectures fail to meet them. The excuse that they are short staffed is a perpetual get out.
@geoffrey_Croshaw was the most recent member on here to get his EU card I think and it took a long while.
Your other option apart from the Marie is the Défenseur de Droits who are there to hold administration to account. Look up your nearest office.
What are the advantages of having a CdS, apart from the legality of the situation, nobody has ever asked for mine since the Brexit ones were issued, and not in the years before when we were told they weren’t necessary.
A passport of whatever hue has always been sufficient for ID purposes and if someone was stopped and actually demanded, by a gendarme for instance, would the proof of application not be sufficient?
Not necessarily. A receipt for an application is useful in some circumstances (if in date) but life for many non-europeans without proper papers is quite uncomfortable. You may get more generous treatment as older.
However a non-european passport is not enough ID for hospitals, for renting a flat, and other admin for example, they want to know you are legally here.
And for French driving licences. If you have a non-EU passport, you have to upload a scan of your carte de séjour to show that you’re in the country lawfully.
I doubt if anything I say can be of help but here goes. We arrived on April 1st 22. My OH has an Irish passport . I finally received my cd in February 23.
Totally at a loss initially as to what I should do. I finally sent my docs to the prefecture. They were returned with a note indicating the menu option of their website which I should choose. What had thrown me was that I was counted as being non European. Once I chose the non European option I was given a list of dates and times for my interview. The earliest date was in November. The interview went fine except I had to pay 200euros! I was told my card would arrive in two or three months which it did. Best of luck. I feel I’ve been let off very lightly
We have Brits retiring from an international organization who on leaving the organization have to surrender their special titres de séjour. Their spouses have to do likewise.
They then go to the Prefecture armed with a note verbale from the foreign ministry confirming their right to a WARP (because they were unable to apply by the original deadline as they were not permitted to surrender the special TdS).
They then hit a brick wall. Can’t even get appointments. The only one who’s managed to get a WARP has a spouse who’s naturalized French.
A few of them have Irish spouses so Plan B is to get a carte de séjour as the spouse of an EU national. So it will be interesting to see how well that works. It’s very worrying. You can’t even join PUMA without showing your carte de séjour.
Strasbourg. Which, given the huge number of non-French inhabitants, should be well used to dealing with this stuff.
If you PM me John I can give you more details.
Again we were very fortunate in our situation. We had lived in France before Brexit and had kept our carte vital cards. Somewhere I had read that your health account remains open for 6 years so our health accounts were still okay all I had to do was log into our ameli account and change our address and bank details. So I got 3 months travel insurance by which time I had got my new green card. I was advised to get a mutuelle which was sufficient health insurance for my séjour application. I received a 5year carte de séjour. If you can get your carte vital then you could do the same but maybe that’s not possible without the carte de séjour. Health insurance is of course incredibly expensive especially as you get older
Thanks Geoffrey.
In our case my husband will be moving from private health insurance to PUMA and he will definitely need a carte de séjour in order to do that.
I now have a French driving licence. I’m currently here on a long-stay visitor visa (VLS-TS) and had to send a scan of my VLS-TS, but a CdS appears not to be a requirement. Although I do own a house here, and it is apparent that I am in the process of applying for a CdS.
Long-stay visa, carte de séjour, etc. Something to show you’re lawfully resident. What ANTS won’t accept is a Foreign Affairs Ministry-issued titre de séjour spécial (which is what my husband has and is therefore unable to renew his French licence).
