Sorry, me again… endless questions for the hive mind. After 8 long months I finally received my French Driving Licence. Hurrah, but on closer inspection (of an old defunct UK Licence) I seem to have lost many categories. I passed my test in 1986 and haven’t used most of those categories to be honest, but I have driven small busses etc in the past. Can i retrieve some of these classes back to my French licence?
See Attached
Top one being the UK one
During the application process there were boxes to tick/information to read about how to keep categories. You needed to have got a medical certificate from an authorised doctor and send it in. Whether one can do this after the event I don’t know. But @kim will (next week probs as she doesn’t look at her messages at the weekend like a sensible person)
- Si vous avez un permis lourd, avis médical d’aptitude à la conduite des catégories lourdes, ou déclaration de renonciation aux catégories lourdes
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How would that apply for motorcycles? This has me quite concerned now as I’d hate to lose motorcycle entitlement.
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I recall something aboutgrandfather/grandmother rights if you have held the A category long enough. Otherwise you loose it.
Spécificité du permis moto : La catégorie A n’est plus échangée directement sur les permis de conduire français depuis 2016.
Si vous avez l’équivalent de la catégorie A sur votre permis de conduire étranger, seule la catégorie A2 est reportée. Elle permet de conduire une moto d’une puissance n’excédant pas 35 kW.
Pour obtenir la catégorie A, il faut être détenteur de la catégorie A2 depuis au moins 2 ans et suivre une formation complémentaire de 7 heures.
Exception pour l’échange d’un permis de conduire UE/EEE contre un permis français :
La catégorie A peut-être délivrée directement :
- si vous aviez un permis européen au format carte de l’Union Européenne (délivrés sur le fondement de la directive 2006/126 de la Commission Européenne),
ou - si vous aviez un permis européen délivré avant 2006 et que la réglementation le prévoit explicitement (selon le tableau des équivalences annexé à la décision 2016/1945 de la Commission Européenne).
Retrouvez toutes les informations utiles sur le site service-public.frT
My Grandad drove a tank in WW2 - i’d certainly want that on my licence 
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I’m not sure what motorbikes i can ride now… most likely mopeds and up to 125cc. Much like before althought I only ever had mopeds as a 16 year old
Thanks, I’ve had mine since long before 2006 and hopefully Brexit hasn’t screwed up the exchange rules for bikes.
I just talked to a friend (who is in his 70s) who exchanged to Permis de Conduire and he retained all his previous motorbike classes. He’d passed his tests etc. so that’s probably good news for you. As Jane said, there are boxes to check when doing the application - i must have missed those somewhere. It really isn’t that simple a process. Maybe bear that in mind when submitting
I’m not sure, my hubby used to have a cute 125cc and has a project one now and when he looked into we had to prove he’d had one before. We’d got rid of our insurance proof ect on an Oz to France move and when we contacted Axa they couldn’t help is as it was too long ago (10/15 years) and they didn’t have the details anymore.
looking at my new licence i have A1 category. I looked that up and it says up to 125cc. I’m pretty sure i’d have to take some kind of test in the UK for that - well 30/40 years ago my friends we’re taking tests on 125cc bikes. I don’t really know what it means on my French licence. Perhaps i’d be up for riding a small motorbike these days considering the cost of fuel.
Pre -Brexit or posr-Brexit? It all changed!
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That’s interesting alright. Looks like a UK A is now knocked back to an A2, which is pretty inconvenient.
I picked a B1 category when I transferred, not that I need it.
pretty sure post Brexit
Not if you obtained a UK/EU driving licence that included motorcycle categories prior to 2006, as @JaneJones posted above:
UK to French Driving Licence Swap - why have i lost categories? - #4 by JaneJones.
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Brexit just keeps on giving doesn’t it.
This idea that they give you A2 then you must keep it for 2 years then you musr do a 7hr training course to get A, sounds like that weird category the UK had that allowed you to do.something like that to get a category A motorbike licence if you were over a certsin age snd had hsd a car licrnce since before a certain year (I think in the 80’s). The French look to have somehow combined something like that (the A2) with a sort of CBT training.
It seems most unfair. Though the UK has had the European style card-type licences for some time - I wonder if that’s what they mean.
Though with the news on the other thread that even being in the French health system with an S1 we are still not sble to get valid travel insurance snf other admin stuff I’ve got going on, seeing this kind of unfair stuff on motorbikes means French admin is reslly starting to overwhelm me agsin.
I don’t have up to date knowledge but, to answer the OP question, certainly 25 years ago when I swapped mine, loss/gain of categories was simply due to mistakes and inefficiencies.
In my case I lost my motorbike one which did not trouble me having no intention ever again riding one, but mysteriously I gained a bus permit, a vehicle I had never driven. More serious was the fact that they forgot to send my UK one back to Swansea, a fact which only came to light when I was accused in Cornwall of not having a valid licence at all.
My wife had a different experience, they didn’t keep her UK licence at all, and she thus had 2 licences 'till the end of her life.
Whether or not these things can still happen in this new centralised world, I don’t know, but I wouldn’t bet against it.
I’m not really that bothered about losing most of my categories, but it does seem that i can only drive a maximum of a 3.5 tonne vehicle now. I doubt i’ll ever want one, but I can’t now drive a big campervan. I’ve never understood how the categories work anyway. I couldn’t ride a big mototrbike until i took a few tests before, so has that changed now? Can I still take the tests in France then have ‘big’ motorbike put back on? It’s not as if i could ride one when I had the A category anyway
The staging of motorcycle training has been “a thing” for a long time - back in the 70s/80s when I learned you had three stages - under 50cc for 16 year olds, then up to 125cc for learners, then a full licence for any capacity once you passed your test.
Nowadays in the EU (and also in the UK as a post-Brexit legacy system) there are more stages, with compulsory training and tests at each stage - far more intensive than car drivers have to undergo.
I won’t detail them all here.
BUT if you obtained a full (category A) motorcycle licence prior to 2006 (when the A/A1/A2 split came in, IIRC) then you can keep that licence when you exchange your UK licence for an EU one, without having to do an additional round of training and a test.
All this rigmarole is intended to ensure that motorcyclists are better trained and thus reduce the higher incidence of deaths and injuries that motorcyclists suffer compared to car drivers.
It does miss the point somewhat in that many accidents involving motorcyclists are due to the actions of the drivers of other vehicles rather than the motorcyclists themselves. But overall of course it’s a good thing that any category of road user should be better trained.
However, the net effect has been to deter younger people from taking up motorcycling, because of the hassle and expense of going through all the training and certification stages.
They either just ride around on small capacity bikes on L-plates forever (like those swarms of food delivery riders that plague every town), or they buy an old clapped out car.
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See my comments above, and the link that @JaneJones posted.
If you learned to ride a motorbike prior to 2006, then whatever motorcycle entitlement you had prior to that should persist - but as already noted by others you have to ask for those categories to be retained. Maybe you could reapply for a French licence and tick the boxes this time? Or did you surrender your old UK one?
If you have a lesser category (such as the A2 for bikes up to 35kW in power) then yes I would think you could undergo the necessary training and exam to bring yourself up to A standard and allow you to ride a bigger bike.
That said, A2 bikes are plenty powerful enough for many people.
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I’m pretty sure that the insane prices for new motorcycles and the huge number of clueless/aggressive/uninsured drivers are more of an off-putting factor than the extra training and tests.