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BREXIT

Reader question: Can I be resident in France and the UK?

We're now approaching the deadline for Brits who were resident in France before 2021 to apply for residency, but there is still much confusion about how the system works.

Published: 22 June 2021 09:31 CEST
Reader question: Can I be resident in France and the UK?
Home is not just where the heart is. Photo: Patrick Herzog/AFP

Question: We live in the UK and have a second home in France where we typically spend around 6 months of the year. We don’t want to limit our stays to just 90 days out of every 180, so why can’t we apply to be residents of both France and the UK? If we apply for a carte de séjour in France will that solve the problem for us?

Pre-Brexit, there were plenty of people who split their time roughly equally between France and the UK and considered both places home.

The flexibility accorded by EU freedom of movement, coupled with the fact that France and the UK – unusually within the EU – did not require EU citizens to register for residency meant that people didn’t really need to spend too much time thinking about which country they were officially ‘resident’ in.

Sadly, those days are over.

Brits who were living in France before December 30th, 2020 and wish to continue living here must apply for a residency permit – known as a carte de séjour – and must do it quickly. The deadline to apply is September 30th, 2021 – extended from an earlier deadline of June 30th. Find out how to apply HERE.

Brits who live in the UK and own property in France now need to either limit their stays to 90 days in every 180 – find a full explanation of the 90 day rule HERE – or get a visa for longer stays.

READ ALSO How to get a visitor visa for France

But what about those who want residency in both?

Unfortunately, it’s more complicated than that. The Withdrawal Agreement carte de séjour is for people who live in France – if you declare residency that comes with other other obligations such as filing an annual tax return in France and consequently the loss of certain rights in the UK such as access to the NHS as a UK resident.

Residency in France gives you other rights such as the right to work and – useful in a pandemic – the right to return home even if the borders are closed to most other travellers.

Residency in immigration terms – ie where you live – is not the same as tax residency. Tax residency can become automatic after a certain number of days in a country, while immigration residency needs to be applied for.

It is estimated that up to 25,000 Brits living in France have not yet applied for residency – people who do not apply within the deadline and continue to live in France become undocumented migrants, with all the associated problems.

READ ALSO What happens to Brits in France who don’t register before the September 30th deadline?

Member comments

  1. The info above is out of date in certain ways. As a result of changes in the last few years, the UK now allows access to the NHS by non-resident Brits as long as they remain citizens. If you have an S1 and register for a Carte Vitale the NHS pays for your health care anyway. This ‘dual access’ has long been the practice in the EU anyway for many nations. Whether or not you should remain registered with your previous local GP is a moot point but I suspect nobody will care very much either way. In any case, for public health reasons, access to GP services and A&E are free in the UK whether or not you are registered with the NHS or a UK citizen. The main exclusion used to be for planned treatments such as operations and courses of e.g. radiotherapy but the UK government has now recognised that people may prefer to have these done in their ‘home’ country and allows this. Problems will only arise if you become a citizen of another country.

    1. NB I’ve checked the source of my information in the above that NHS treatment remains free even if you are covered by an S1 and it was in the covering letter from the NHS that came with my S1 form just over two years ago. It says that a charge will only be levied where there is a statutory one such as for prescriptions. But I would assume that the ‘free for 60 plus’ rule trumps that as well.

  2. Thanks Iain, that is my reading of the situation too. It must be right that if you have paid into the NI pot until retirement, you can not only receive your pension if resident in France but if you still retain a residence in the U.K. you will receive the same NHS services as a permanent U.K. resident when you are in the U.K.

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For members

BRITS IN FRANCE

Thousands of Brits still move to France despite post-Brexit paperwork

Moving to France has become a lot more complicated for Brits since Brexit, but latest French immigration data shows that thousands of them still move here.

Published: 1 August 2024 12:37 CEST
Thousands of Brits still move to France despite post-Brexit paperwork

The days of EU freedom of movement are over for UK nationals (unless they also have the passport of an EU country) and now moving to France requires first getting a visa and then requesting a carte de séjour residency card once here.

Getting a visa comes with a raft of requirements including proof of being able to be financially self-sufficient via either a job, a pension or savings.

READ MORE: EXPLAINED: How to apply for a visa to France

However it seems that these requirements are not putting off everyone – and around 9,000 Brits made the move to France in 2023.

French statistics

The French interior ministry has published its provisional immigration data for 2023, which provides the first clear post-Brexit picture of how many Brits move to France.

Although the Brexit transition period ended at the end of 2020, figures on residency cards from 2021 and 2022 include British long-term residents in France being issued with a residency card under the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement.

The figures from 2023 therefore provide the first clear indication of how many Brits move to France since Brexit.

And thousands did – 9,261 UK nationals were issued with a first-time carte de séjour residency card in 2023. Although this number may include a small number of family members of British residents who were resident before Brexit, the great majority of these are people moving to France for the first time.

READ MORE: 10 things to do before moving to France

It is not possible to compare this with pre-Brexit patterns since before the UK left the EU Brits were not required to get a visa or residency card to live in France, and there is therefore no comparable data.

How many Brits live in France now?

The interior ministry data does, however, give an idea of the total number of Brits living in France – prior to Brexit, this was difficult to estimate due to EU freedom of movement. 

In 2023, French authorities noted that there were 166,314 Brits holding residency cards in France, a 2.5 percent increase from 2022, when there were 161,194.

The real figure is probably slightly higher because it does not include Brits who have dual nationality with an EU country – eg British-Irish or British-French dual nationals – since they are not required to have a residency card. 

In 2020, a study by the French national statistics body, INSEE used pre-Brexit data and estimated that there were 148,000 Britons in France. This also found that a large number of Brits in France were in western and south-west France, particularly in départements of Charente, Dordogne and Haute-Vienne.

READ MORE: Which part of south-west France is the top ‘dream destination’ to move to?

Brits becoming French

In 2023, 1,522 Brits gained French nationality, with 767 going via décret (by residency) while another 755 gained French nationality via déclaration, the category for those who are either married to a French person or can prove family ties (eg parent of a French child).

In comparison, in 2022, 2,206 Brits became French, and in 2019, 3,557 did.

Acquiring French citizenship is a long process – the application takes an average of between 18 months and two years, while those applying through residency need to have lived in France for five years (cut to two years if they have completed higher education in France).

The post Brexit period saw a spike in Brits applying to become French – many had lived in France for many years but had never considered it necessary before since they already had the right to live in France.

What Brits do in France

Unfortunately, the data did not specify the types of residency cards given to Brits in 2023. 

However, Eurostat data from 2022 did break down first time residency permits into four categories; work, study, family reunification or ‘other’ – which includes retirees and others who don’t intend to work or study in France.

READ MORE: ‘Not all gin-swilling pensioners’ – What are Brits in France really doing?

While their data differs slightly form the interior ministry numbers, they found that a little under half (3,182 out of 7,927) of first-time residency cards for Brits were work-related.

After that, students came in second place, with 1,901 came to study in 2022.

France has been working hard to market itself as an international study destination and around 400,000 foreign students come here each year. It is the fourth most popular country for foreign students – and the top non-English speaking country.

Although Brexit has made studying in France more complicated for British students, the fact that French is still widely taught in British schools makes it a natural destination for those who want to study abroad.

READ MORE: How easy is it to move to France if you don’t speak French?

The third biggest group of Brits was the ‘other’ category which includes retirees and had 1,760 people. Meanwhile, 1,084 people came via family reunification – ie joining a spouse, partner or parents already resident in France, according to Eurostat.

How do Brits compare overall?

In comparison to general immigration data, Brits are somewhat different and are more likely to move to France to work than to study.

In 2023, the interior ministry data for all non-EU nationals moving to France showed that the largest group were students. After that, the second largest category was ‘family’ related residency cards, and the third was work-related.

Brits reverse that trend being most likely to move to France to work.

As for the number of Brits moving to France, there are fewer Britons coming here than Americans. In 2023, 12,153 Americans were issued a first-time residency card – although that number includes a significant number of students doing a study abroad programme who don’t actually intend to make France their home.

Brits come in 10th place for the largest nationality represented in new residency cards issued, behind Indians who made up 9,819 first-time cartes de séjour. Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, China and the United States were the top five (in order).

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