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UPDATED: The ultimate no-deal Brexit checklist for Britons in France

As we approach the Brexit endgame, leaving the EU without a deal on October 31st is a real possibility. Kalba Meadows from citizens' rights group France Rights has helped us put together this guide on how to prepare.

Published: 30 September 2019 15:53 CEST

UPDATED: The ultimate no-deal Brexit checklist for Britons in France

Brexit has much wider implications than being stuck in the longer passport control queue Photo: AFP

If you haven't already done so, it's a good idea to make some personal preparations for a no-deal Brexit scenario to put yourself in the best possible situation should the worst happen. Here are some ideas:

1. Make sure that you're legally resident in France on Brexit day under current rules

To benefit from France's no deal ordonnance, you must be legally resident in France before a no deal Brexit. Simply having a foot on the soil here or owning property isn't enough – you have to meet the conditions and exercising your treaty rights to be legally resident. You should:

Make sure that you've submitted tax returns in France if you've been here long enough to do so (even if all your income comes from the UK);
Meet the conditions for legal residence according to which category of resident you fall into (working/self-employed/student/retired or economically inactive for another reason).
Make sure that you're in the French health system and that you have an attestation of your rights even if you don't yet have a Carte Vitale. Download a new attestation from your health provider's (AMELI, RAM etc) website just in case.
If you already have a carte de séjour permenant, you can swap that after Brexit for a carte de résidence longue durée. Everyone else will have to make a completely new application for a card post-Brexit, so at this stage there is little benefit to you in applying for a carte de séjour now under current rules. The French government has announced that it is creating a new website so that Brits who are already resident in France can apply online. The site is due to be up and running later in October.

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2. Create, and keep up to date, a dossier of all relevant documentation. In particular:

Collate all your Avis d'Imposition since you arrived in France. You may need them to prove the length of your residence. You can download them and print them out from within your account at impots.gouv.fr. Alternatively request a 'bordereau de situation fiscale' from your tax office for each year of your residence. You can do this online, in your account at impots.gouv.fr.
Put together a file of utility bills for at least five years and keep it up to date – make sure you have one document per semester (so two per year). This will prove your continued residence.
If your name is not on the taxe foncière or taxe d'habitation bills for your household, or on any utility bills, get it added now.
For women in particular: make sure that the name on bills, bank statements, pension statements, payslips etc matches the name on your passport if possible.
Put together a file of bank statements, wage slips and/or pension statements for the last five years if you've lived here that long. Longer is even better – 10 years is good. You may need these to prove the stability and sufficiency of your resources.
As the new carte de séjour system will be online, it would be a good idea to get all paper documents scanned so they are ready to upload to the site.

3. Check your passport

You'll need to comply with different rules to enter and travel around the Schengen area. There are two important issues that may affect your right to travel or to live here legally after exit, so it's really important to start thinking about this now.
Firstly, Schengen Border Code rules mean that existing passports which were renewed early and therefore have over 10 years validity will no longer be valid right up to the expiry date written on the passport, but will be limited to the 10 years immediately after their issue date. For example, if your passport was renewed (under the old rules) 6 months before its expiry date, it would show a valid period of 10 years and 6 months. After Brexit day, you will effectively 'lose' the last 6 months validity, as third country nationals' passports must have been issued within the last 10 years. Note: this may affect you even if you don't travel – in order to remain a legal resident in France you need to make sure that the issue date on your passport is later than exactly 10 years before Brexit day.
Secondly, your passport should have at least 6 months' validity on arrival, after discounting the period above.
There are more details on all of this in the UK government guidance here. It's a good idea to read it now.

4. Driving licence

There is some good news on driving licences, as the French government announced in April that British people who can prove “normal residence” in France can continue to use their UK licence after a no-deal Brexit. However this only applied to people who have been here for 185 days (six months) on Brexit day. People with less than six months residence will have to apply for a French licence as a Third Country National.

5. Think about moving money

If you have bank accounts, savings or investments in the UK, consider moving them to France now. Sterling may drop (further) in the case of a no deal exit; there may also be temporary problems moving money in and out of the EU.

6. Try to have a financial backstop

If at all possible, try and make sure you have access to enough cash to see you through two or three months, especially if your income comes from the UK and is transferred monthly.

7. Consider your personal pension

If you have a personal pension in the UK (this doesn’t apply to state or public service/occupational pensions) and have not yet retired, think about getting advice about how to deal with this and cashing it in if you’re old enough, or moving it. There may be issues with the rights of UK insurers/financial services providers to operate in the EU without having a formal presence there after Brexit and these could cause problems e.g. with insurers making payments to those living outside the UK. Write to your insurer/private pension company in the UK to ask them what plans they have put in place for post-Brexit scenarios.

8. Consider your health cover

If you're still using a UK issued EHIC to cover your health care, you'll also need to take out full private health insurance to cover you until you can join PUMa, as the EHIC scheme will fall away on Brexit day and you won't be covered. As a reminder, having health cover is a condition of legal residence. Also bear in mind that you may not be entitled to use the NHS on trips back to the UK, so you will need to sort out travel insurance or health insurance if you are planning a trip back.
For people on the S1 system the UK government says it will continue to cover the costs for a minimum of six months. After it's down to a bilateral agreement between Britain and France, but technical discussions on that have not so far begun. So nothing will happen on Brexit day and there is no need to stockpile medication.

9. Look at ways you could maximise your income and minimise your expenses

This applies particularly if the bulk of your income is in sterling, which may take a serious hit after a no deal exit – sliding even further than it already has. What's your bottom line? What can you do to turn your income into euro income?
Create a personal financial contingency plan. Look at ways you can cut your spending temporarily, and at ways you could create additional income.
Consider getting any potentially expensive dental or optical work done now, in case you have to reduce the cover on your mutuelle (if you have one). Or wait until 2020 when France will begin moving towards 100 percent reimbursement on dental, optical and hearing costs.

10. If you have a business that relies on attracting people from the UK

Start thinking about changing your client demographic. If there is a no deal Brexit people may not want to travel to the EU next year and you'll need to find new clients if you're to survive financially. Make sure you have a website in French, if you haven't already, and that you begin to advertise NOW to attract French and EU27 customers.
Put contingency plans in place now to deal with potential issues with VAT, excise, billing, professional insurance cover, etc.

11. Make sure that you're in France on Brexit day

This is probably not the best time to make a family visit to the UK! Transport could be chaotic, and there is currently no real clarity on how people who do not have a carte de séjour will travel in and out of France after Brexit (see below).

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13. If you have to travel …

As a British resident and non-EU citizen, from Brexit day you will lose access to the EU/EEA passport/immigration queues at airports other border crossings in any country in the Schengen zone. Instead, you will have to queue with other third country nationals to have your passport stamped both on entry and exit. This is done to make sure that visitors don't overstay their 90 days. If you have a carte de séjour you will need to make sure that you carry and present this to prove your status as resident and not visitor. We are urgently trying to clarify – with the European Commission and the Ministry of the Interior – the situation for those who currently don't have cartes de séjour and in the meantime we strongly advise that if you must travel close to Brexit day you make sure you have substantial evidence with you of your French address and status as resident.

12. Think about, or rethink about, applying for French citizenship

French citizenship won't guarantee all the rights you currently hold as an EU citizen (mutual recognition of professional qualifications, for example) but it will guarantee you the right to reside and to work – and as an EU citizen you'd continue to benefit from full free movement rights.

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13. Get your professional qualifications recognised now

The European Commission has said that, whatever the outcome of the negotiations, Brexit does not affect decisions made pre-Brexit by EU27 countries recognising UK qualifications under the general EU directive on the recognition of professional qualifications (Directive 2005/36/EC). For details of which qualifications are covered see HERE. So if you have a UK qualification covered by that Directive and you need to be able to use it, apply to get it recognised before Brexit day.

14. Marry a French citizen

Only joking. (Sort of). Actually, you might be better off marrying a non-French EU27 citizen, as EU rules on family members and reunification are more favourable than the national French immigration rules that would apply to a French citizen.

15. Above all … don't panic!

Although things are chaotic and changing from day to day, we're all obviously still hoping for the best, while preparing for the worst.

Kalba Meadows is head of the citizens rights team at France Rights – find more Brexit related info and guidance on their website here.

Member comments

Anonymous - 26 March 2019 at 18:13 CET

About French citizenship, think how it may (or may not) affect any will which you may have made under your non-French nationality’s rules (ie: under “Brussels IV Convention”) so that when you die, your adopted French nationality may be applied preferentially with the strict and rigid rules about testamentary inheritance in France.
Anonymous - 4 October 2019 at 15:53 CEST

When you say Carte de Sejour, do you also mean TITRE de Sejour?

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INTERVIEW: 'A lot of people think Brexit is done, but it's not for Brits in Europe'

In the early days of 2021, after the United Kingdom had left the EU and completed the final stage of Brexit, many British citizens returned to their home countries in Europe only to face a grilling at the border.

Though the Withdrawal Agreement (WA) technically guaranteed their right to live and work in the countries they’d settled in before Brexit, there was widespread confusion about these fundamental rights and many were treated like new arrivals.

Over time, the chaos at the airports subsided as border officials and airlines were given clearer guidance on the treatment of Brits. But three years later, a number of Brits who live on the continent still face problems when it comes to proving their post-Brexit rights.

This was the reason campaign group British in Europe decided to set up their new EU-funded ICE project. Starting this year in March, it aims to build valuable connections between UK citizens abroad and mentor the next generation of civil rights advocates around the continent. The acronym stands for ‘Inform, Empower, Connect’ and the project’s organisers describe it as “the first project of its kind”.

“It’s a completely innovative project – especially the fact that it’s across so many countries,” Jane Golding, chair of British in Europe and one of the project’s founders, told The Local.

Bringing together groups from 11 EU member states, the project aims to train up volunteers to understand both the Withdrawal Agreement and EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, as well as learning skills like advocacy and communication, using real-life civil rights cases that are referred to British in Europe.

“The ultimate goal is to amplify the messages across the wider group,” said Golding. “You start with the volunteers, they go back to their groups, then the people that we train, they go back and train people. Then they pass on that knowledge to the wider groups, on their Facebook accounts and through social media, and hopefully it all snowballs, not just in their countries but across the EU.”

‘Far-reaching repercussions’

So many years after Brexit, it’s hard to believe that there’s still a need for a project like ICE that empowers Brits to protect their rights. Indeed, the future of groups like British in Europe and regional groups like British in Germany and Spain-based group EuroCitizens felt uncertain just a year or two ago.

But Golding says there are still serious issues cropping up for Brits in several countries around Europe – they just have a different quality to the problems that arose at the start.

“In some ways it’s needed even more because as we predicted right at the beginning, at the first stage of implementation, you’ve got the more routine cases,” she explained.

“What we’re seeing now is not as many cases, but when the cases come up, they’re complex. They can have such far-reaching repercussions on people’s lives. And of course, memories start to fade. A lot of people think Brexit is already done, but it’s not.”

Volunteers in British in Europe ICE project

The volunteers of the British in Europe ICE project pose for a photo at the kick-off meeting in Brussels on May 21st, 2024. Photo courtesy of British In Europe

Though the rights set out in the Withdrawal Agreement apply across the continent, different countries have taken different approaches to implementing them.

That means that while in Germany, for example, UK citizens simply had to declare that they lived in the country, people in neighbouring Denmark had to apply for their rights.

This led to a notorious situation in Denmark in which as many as 2,000 Brits were threatened with deportation after not applying in time or completing the right application process. According to Golding, this had a lot to do with the fact that people who arrived in 2020 weren’t given the same information as other UK migrants who arrived before.

In Sweden, meanwhile, the situation is still difficult for many Brits who lived there prior to Brexit.

“There have been issues with an anomalously high numbers of refusals compared to other countries, and they seem to be taking a very strict approach on late applications,” Golding explained.

Portugal has been another difficult case. Although the country opted for a declaratory system where Brits could simply exchange old residence documents for a new ID card after Brexit, reports suggest that the authorities have taken years to issue these cards, leaving many of the some 34,000 Brits in the country in limbo.

“While people are still waiting to have their status confirmed and have their card in their hand, it’s difficult to access a whole range of services, like health services, or applying for jobs or dealing with the authorities, or even going to the bank,” Golding said. “All of these problems just affect people’s lives.”

A French border guard checks a passport at the border

A French border guard checks a passport at the border. Photo by DENIS CHARLET / AFP

There are also concerns about the EU’s new exit and entry system (EES), due to come into force in October, which is based on biometric documentation.

“We still do not have clear data on how many people in declaratory countries like Germany, where it wasn’t compulsory to apply for the card, don’t actually have a card,” Golding said. “How is that going to play out if it’s a document-based digitalised system?”

A lack of support

In the immediate aftermath of Brexit, funding from the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) was still available to support NGOs in Europe helping Brits with their migration and civil rights issues. But that temporary funding soon expired, leaving groups like British in Europe largely on their own.

“The whole point is people’s lives change at very different paces,” Golding said. “And now this project is really going to start to pick up some of those cases and report on those issues, which is really crucial and exciting for the precedent that it sets, and it’s very clearly necessary still, because people don’t just sort their lives in the 18 months that the FCDO chose to supply that funding.”

This feeling of being left alone and increasingly isolated from the UK is one that many Brits in Europe have felt in the aftermath of Brexit. But the upcoming UK election on July 4th could be a game-changer.

This time, following a change in the law, Brits who have lived abroad for more than 15 years will be able to vote for the first time.

Polling station in the UK

A polling station in the UK. Photo by Elliott Stallion on Unsplash

When it comes to the election, the message from British in Europe is clear: “Make your voice count now, make your vote count, make sure you use it,” Golding said.

With the June 18th registration deadline fast approaching, BiE is advising UK citizens abroad to apply for a proxy vote as soon as possible, rather than relying on a postal vote from abroad. Since the 15-year rule was abolished on January 16th, more than 100,000 British citizens have registered to vote, according to official statistics. It is unclear how many were registered before the change in the law.

With an estimated 4.7 million Brits currently living abroad – 1.3 million of whom are in the EU – this could have a significant impact on the electoral landscape, Golding says. But most significantly, the change is creating a feeling of connection and belonging that wasn’t there before.

Nurturing this sense of belonging is one of the main goals of ICE.

With these bridges being built, British in Europe hopes to create a network of support that spans across borders.

“Now we’ve met. We’re going to meet,” said Golding. “We know we’re going to meet again in Berlin in October and then we’ll meet again in the new year in 2025 as well. It means a huge amount because even British in Europe, our steering team, we’ve only met physically three times.”

This opens up the possibility of people sharing their knowledge from country to country, Golding explained.

“There is crossover and the reassurance of having that EU wide view and knowing that you’re not alone and knowing that in this country, we managed to get this solution,” she said. “And then you can go back and say to the authorities in your country, well, in that country they did that – all of that helps. It’s really good.”

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