TOH is currently in the UK. His passport expires on 22nd of this month.
He has a ten-year carte de sejour.
Will he be allowed back into France just with the carte de sejour if the passport is expired?
Sadly, no idea of the correct answer to your questionā¦
but I reckon this is a good reminderā¦
for everyone to take a look at their PASSPORT and check the EXPIRY DATEā¦
EDIT: (try and get him back before 22nd Aprilā¦ or apply for replacement asap)
No is the quick answer - CDS isnāt a travel document.
But as the links above you can get one quickly - by post or in person - 22nd is.looming but thereās time to fix before
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Several U.K. cities have a Passport Office with a same day walk-in service.
It isnāt cheap, I remember paying Ā£80 to replace mine at Londonās Victoria Passport Office in 2014.
Ā£177 same day sercice and Ā£142 one week service
snapā¦ 
And remember that most countries want you to have at least 6 months validity remaining on your passport when you use it to cross borders.
Yepā¦ although I believe for CdSWA folk that is not the caseā¦ for them, an in-date PP is āin-dateā.
Whatever, always best to keep an eye open for rules and regulationsā¦
Iām not sure that is entirely the case. As @chrisell says, itās not a travel document and your presence in the EU as a TCN must be supported by a valid in date passport with 6 months validity remaining.
Fair enoughā¦ I thought this had been answered elsewhere (in-date is in-date) but Iām happy to stand corrected.
As I sayā¦ best to check the regulations for whichever countryā¦
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This is what the British Government says on one site, but I have yet to find this on an official French site. And the person checking passports will be French! And is unlikely to read British government info.
So if you donāt want to waste hours at the border while people go and try to contact Embassy, and donāt want to risk being sent back, then get a renewal before you travel! This is main brit gov site for everyone.
Passport validity
If you are planning to travel to an EU country (except Ireland), or Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Andorra, Monaco, San Marino or Vatican City, you must meet the Schengen area rules.
Your passport must meet 2 requirements. It must be:
- less than 10 years old on the day you enter (check the ādate of issueā)
- valid for at least 3 months after the day you plan to leave (check the āexpiry dateā)
We are asking the European Commission to clarify the 10-year rule. Their guidance for Schengen border guards may not be updated until the spring of 2022. Until then, for some Schengen countries your passport may need to be less than 10 years old during your whole visit, and the 3 months at the end of your visit may need to be within 10 years of your passportās issue date.
Check both the issue date and the expiry date in your passport. If you renewed your passport early, extra months may have been added to its expiry date. This could affect the requirement for your passport to be less than 10 years old.
Yes, youāre right, the consensus before I thought was definitely that if you have a WA CDS that was a day in date, you can use it to get between France and the U.K. and the very least, there is no requirement to have the full 6 months to get in or out of the country you are resident. I guess for other countries it would be different, but Iām not certain, but youāre not imagining it @Stella, when it was discussed on here before that was definitely the end consensus I think.
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Lest folk think I was going barmy ā¦
I should explain that Iām sure I read somewhere that one (as French Resident and a holder of CdSWA) can apply for a new PP but , while that renewal is in process, no need to worry as the PP is not out of date until the last day is goneā¦
cheers @kirsteastevenson
ah yesā¦ thanks for thatā¦ given that (without a CdS) you have a 90 day in 120 day restriction, that makes perfect joined up sense for the 6 months remaining validity requirement.
How about travelling between Shengen countries? My French partner never takes a passport to go to Spain or Italy, obviously she has her identity card. From memory, there are never passport checks, so I looked on the Europa site.
If you are an EU national , you do not need to show your national ID card or passport when you are travelling from one border-free Schengen EU country to another.
So how do they know that you are not an EU national without asking you (to show your national, ID card or passport)?
Clearly if you were wearing an England replica cricket shirt (or a bowler hat) they might have their suspicions, but otherwiseā¦
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You do not need to show it doesnāt mean you canāt be asked for it. So most internal borders are open - except when there are checks in place. We saw a lot during covid of course, but otherwise they still do happen. So daft not to have something with you as in most (all?) countries you can be asked to identify yourself by one means or another.
I think weād all have suspicions if someone was wearing either of these, not least that they had no sense of style, got dressed in the dark, or were blind. All the more so if they were wearing them together.
We are supposed to have our CNI on us at all times. Or a passport but that isnāt as good a bit of ID as a CNI seeing practically anyone can get their mitts on a passport but you have to be a Fr citizen to get a CNI. Within the EU and prob efta countries we use our CNIs.
For Brits, as far as I knowā¦ the only piece which proves identityā¦ is the Passport.
Thus it certainly makes sense to have it when going from one country to another.
Whether or not one gets asked to produce it ā¦ doesnāt matterā¦ surely the important thing is to have it available should the question be asked.
and within France itself, I know that some (maybe not all) hospitals have signs saying that Passports are needed when checking-in for treatment (to prove identity for non-French presumably).
(and, yes, this came about well before Brexit so doesnāt just apply to Brits)
Yes you donāt have anything else which counts, and they make you pay for it.
The CNI is free and we are supposed to have it on us all the time, not that anything particularly awful happens if we donāt. We have to pay for our passports too, itās about 85ā¬.