France Rights news and updates

 Dear France Rights followers and supporters As we approach the end of the transition period, we want to outline to you all a bit about what France Rights will be doing and how we'll be working until the end of the application grace period, 30 June 2021. We want to do that because it's important for us to be transparent about what we do, and hopefully it will also help everyone know how to get the best out of our page and website.  Monitoring the implementation of the WA in France Once the décret and arrêté have been published and our website is up to date, France Rights' primary role will be the overall monitoring of how implementation of the Withdrawal Agreement is working across France. As you know, we're the French arm of the EU-wide advocacy group British in Europe - Kathryn and Kalba have both been BiE steering team members for 4 years - and we're working there at monitoring implementation right across the EU. France is seen as a key country for evaluating the

Hi everyone Although we're still waiting for the decree to be published, the last week has been incredibly busy with new information coming left, right and centre! Everything in this post has been published on our Facebook page but we know it's easy to miss things, so because this is all important information we've collected it all together here so you can easily keep up. Travelling in and out of the Schengen area after 31 December 2020 For just about as long as we can remember, we've had countless questions about travelling in and out of the Schengen zone after 31 December 2020 - in particular how to avoid being treated as a tourist if you haven't yet got a new residence card. The European Commission recently published a set of slides outlining the process that would be followed at the Schengen external border. We've used that to put together our latest explainer article, which outlines the situation both for those who are covered by the WA, and for those who a

One of the thorny questions that we're hearing a lot is whether someone who runs gîtes is active or inactive for the purposes of applying for their new residence status and card. In this article we look at this in detail and bring you a few precisions. Firstly, remember that the distinction between economically active and inactive only applies if you’ve been resident in France for less than 5 years . Those who’ve been in France for over 5 years only have to prove residence, not that they meet particular conditions or are in a particular category. If you've lived in France for 5 years or more, you don’t therefore need to rely on the information in this article for the purposes of applying for your new residence status and card. Unfortunately, there is no ‘one size fits all’ answer to whether a gîte owner is active or inactive as it depends on their legal and fiscal status - and that in turn depends on your turnover and other things. Under the Code des Impôts, a gîte operator may

You probably remember that in May we launched a survey looking at how British residents in France are feeling about having to apply for a new residence status and carte de séjour. The French government tells us that it's still on target to open the new online application portal in July, though we still, as I write this on 23 June, don't know exactly when. Anticipating that opening, we wanted to steal a march on what the biggest concerns are, where potential issues might lie, and what kind of information support France Rights can best offer. 2727 of you responded during the 2 weeks the survey was open, making it not just a very interesting survey but also one that is statistically relevant - so a huge thanks go to everyone who took part. We learned many things from the survey, but one thing stood out, and it's this ... Many people are nervous about the application process to come Almost half of all respondents are nervous to a greater or lesser degree about th

While all eyes have, understandably, been on Covid-19 for weeks now, for us at France Rights and British in Europe it's been largely 'business as usual' on citizens' rights as we get closer to the roll out of the Withdrawal Agreement across the EU. What we thought was going to be a quiet time turned into quite the opposite - we've been busy taking stock of where things are at in the different countries and have just finished producing a comprehensive written evidence paper for the Committee on the Future Relationship with the EU (the former Brexit committee, to which we've given evidence before) on the progress of implementation of the Withdrawal Agreement in the various EU countries. As soon as this is published by the Committee and the embargo is lifted, we'll be sharing that with you all. An important date Here in France, we're preparing for an important date coming up in a couple of months time: in July the new online application scheme b

Ever since we began providing information over 3 years ago, the most frequently asked question has been 'how do I apply for a carte de séjour', and our website pages on that subject have been consulted hundreds of thousands of times. We're in a period of transition in more ways than one right now: the old system for applying for a carte de séjour is no more, but the new one isn't yet up and running. Every British citizen living in France will have to apply for a new residence status and a new carte de séjour under the Withdrawal Agreement, and there will be a new online application platform, though full details of the process haven't yet been made public by the French government. But everybody hates a vacuum, so in this article we bring you up to date with what we know so far about how things will work under the new system so that you can begin to prepare for what's to come. The information here is taken both from the text of the Withdrawal Agreement its

Dear France Rights friends and supporters Several thousand of you signed up to receive our updates directly via email. Sadly, we've just learned that the internet gremlins have been at work and that Google has inadvertently deleted all the current subscribers to the France Rights blog ... and worse, that there's no way to recover them. We'll be publishing many updates through the weeks and months to come as we do our best to help people get to grips with the Withdrawal Agreement and what it means for British people in France. To make sure you don't miss an update, could we ask you to resubscribe using the box at the bottom of this post? Your email address is safe with us and won't be used for any other purpose - and you'll find our privacy policy described here: https://www.francerights.info/p/our-privacy-policy.html . Alternatively you can subscribe again by clicking the Subscribe/Souscrire box at the very top of this page. Our sincere apologies f

This is the first article (of a total of 6) in the January 2020 information campaign that we're running jointly with British in Europe, about the Withdrawal Agreement and how it affects you as a British citizen living in France or another EU country. In this article we take a look at what the Withdrawal Agreement is (and what it isn’t), what it does, how it’s different from the no deal legislation that your host country will have produced, and who it covers. The following articles will look specifically at Residence rights and procedures; Health care, pensions and social security; Working rights, professional qualifications and family reunification; What's not covered by the WA; Frequently asked questions. What is the Withdrawal Agreement? The Withdrawal Agreement is an international agreement between the EU and the UK that sets out how the UK’s EU membership will end. It covers the status and rights of both British citizens in the EU and EU nationals in t

Today is a tough day for us. We know that people are shocked and angry and hurting, as we are ourselves after three and a half years of campaigning ... yesterday there was still a glimmer of hope that we might remain in the EU; today that's gone - it's a true Friday the 13th. But while today is a time to hunker down and mourn, it's also for us a time to be pragmatic and look forward to what the results mean for British citizens in France and across the EU. And hard though it might be to accept right now, there is a bright side. Always look on the bright side of life ... After last night's extraordinary landslide victory for the Tories, we can expect the Withdrawal Agreement to be passed in January. The Withdrawal Bill still has to go through Parliament, but with such a big majority it's hard to see how it could fail. The citizens' rights chapter of the Withdrawal Agreement covers most of our current rights, with some exceptions such as continuing freed

In the last article we looked at what the draft Withdrawal Agreement (WA) means for our ongoing rights as British citizens in Europe; in this one we home in on what we already know of how it would affect us in France. This is, you'll notice a slightly shorter article. That's because we don't actually know very much yet! Like most of the other EU27 countries, the French Ministry of the Interior has, up until now, been focusing on procedures for implementing a no deal scenario and little focus has yet been given to how a Withdrawal Agreement would be implemented or what we would have to do to receive new residence cards under it. All the indications are that they won't begin that process until the UK government has voted the Withdrawal Agreement through. We're in regular touch with the officials who head up the relevant team at the Ministry, and we also have regular calls with the citizens' rights team at the British Embassy in Paris, so you can rest assured