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French website for swapping British driving licences to launch in March

French authorities have confirmed that the process for British people to swap their driving licences for French ones will be online from March.

Published: 10 February 2020 09:14 CET

French website for swapping British driving licences to launch in March

Photos: AFP

The issue of driving licences for British residents in France after Brexit has been a complicated and frustrating one, with advice that has changed over the past three years, but French authorities announced on Friday that from March 3rd the process will be online.

In the meantime people should not send applications by post as these will not be processed.

Only British people who are permanent residents in France need to swap their licences and only in certain circumstances (see below).

The French government site states: “The procedure for exchanging a driving licence obtained in a country of the European Union, the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom will be online on the ANTS website from 3 March 2020.

“Pending the opening of this online procedure, requests for exchange should no longer be sent by post.

“Applications sent by post and received from 6 February 2020 will not be processed.”

The exact address of the web portal has not been published yet, but authorities say it will be updated here when it goes live.

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In an interview with The Local in January Baptiste Mandard, Deputy General of the Centre d'Expertises et des Ressources des Titres – Echange des Permis Étrangers (CERT) in Nantes said: “We are launching an online registration platform to simplify the application process.

“Today you have to send in your application via post, but soon, probably some time in the coming six months, you will be able to register online.

“One of the reasons as to why we are moving to an online platform is that many of the applicants have moved and don't receive our letters. That's a difficulty for us.

“We have also completely reorganised our service. We have recruited more people and simplified our processes.”

The history of driving licences and Brexit has been a fraught one.

Initially British people who live in France were advised that after Brexit they would no longer be able to drive on a British licence, and they should instead swap their licence for a French one.

Thousands of people send their licences off to be swapped, completely swamping authorities at Nantes, who process all driving licence applications in France outside of Paris.

Eventually French authorities decided that the situation was untenable, and passed a no-deal Brexit decree saying that British people could continue to drive on a UK licence, and only have to swap it for a French one once their licence expires (or in certain other circumstances like being ordered to by French police. See below).

That remains the official advice today, with authorities saying that the majority of British residents have no need to swap their licences and should not send them off.

However a huge backlog of applications remains, with many people reporting waiting over a year for their applications to be processed.

Baptiste Mandard stressed that people who have already made an application and are waiting for it to be processed should not reapply – either by post or the new web portal – but should simple wait for their application to be processed.

He said: “As long as the licence has not expired, the person can still legally drive in France. It is the expiration date that matters. After the expiration date the person cannot drive anymore.

“We are doing our very best to reduce the delays. We have managed to get them down from six to about 3-4 months. However I advise people to apply for a driving licence exchange at least 6 months prior to the expiration date just to be sure that they get their new licence in time.”

He added that there are still around 5,000 to 6,000 people in the backlog, as well as new applications that are still being received.

For the full interview with Baptiste Mandard, click here.

So what are the rules for British drivers in France?

People who are already resident in France during the transition period (which currently runs until December 31st, 2020) can continue driving on a British licence unless;

The licence has been lost or stolen
You have added a new driving category to your licence
You are specifically instructed to exchange it by a gendarme (this usually happens if you have committed a driving offence)
Your licence or photocard is due to expire within six months – anyone turning 70 must exchange their licence and the photocard licences need renewing every 10 years for most categories.

If you need to renew your licence for any of the above reasons you cannot do it in the UK, as you will need a UK address and have to make a declaration that this is your full time address. If you actually live in France this would obviously be a false declaration, which is a criminal offence in itself.

Those people – and only those people – need to send their licence to CERT to be exchanged for a French one.

Authorities now say that the wait time for new applications which fit one of the above criteria is 3-4 months.

What if I already sent my licence in and I'm still waiting?

The advice for these people is just to wait – frustrating as that may be for the many hundreds of people who have already been waiting for many months. If you need to ask a specific question the best way to contact CERT is by email here. Authorities advise that for those in the backlog there is now a six month wait from now (ie on top of the time they have already waited).

For anyone whose photocard licence expires while they are waiting, there is the possibility of applying to the DVLA for a certificate of entitlement that will allow them to keep driving. Find out more here or on the Facebook group Applying for a French Driving Licence.

What about the rules after the end of the transition period?

For people who move to France after the end of the transition period (currently December 31st) we don't know what the rules will be. It's one of the many things that need to be agreed during the next 11 months.

What about non French residents?

Tourists can continue to come to France and drive on their UK licence during the transition period, after that we don't know what the rules will be but it's possible that British drivers may need an International Drivers Permit.

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'I feel exiled': How Brits in Europe are locked abroad with foreign partners

Europe is home to hundreds of thousands of British nationals, many of whom have foreign partners and children. But if they want to move to the UK to live and work it will soon become more difficult.

When it comes to getting a partner visa, the UK has some of the strictest rules in Europe. In addition to hefty fees and a healthcare surcharge, the Home Office requires British citizens and long-term residents who bring their foreign partner to the UK to have a minimum income showing they can support them without relying on the social security system.

The minimum income up until now was set at £18,600 (€21,700), or £22,400 (€26,100) if the couple had one child, plus another £2,400 (€2,800) for each other child.

But these income requirements will rise steeply from April 11th 2024.

How it works: What Brits in Europe should know about UK’s new minimum income rules

From this date the minimum a British national or long-term resident will need to earn if they want to return home will increase to £29,000 (€33,800) and up to £38,000 (€44,313) by spring 2025, although there will no longer be an additional amount for accompanying children.

Alternatively, families need to prove they have at least £62,500 (€72,884) in cash, which from 11 April will increase to £88,500 (€103,207).

‘Family life has been destroyed’

To put this in context the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford suggests that around 50 percent of UK employees earn less than the £29,000 threshold and 70 percent less than £38,700. The Observatory also says that while the number of people affected by the policy is small compared to the overall UK immigration (family visas represent 5 percent of all entry visas), the impacts on concerned families can be “very significant”.

The Migration Observatory notes that other European countries apply income thresholds to sponsor foreign partners. Spain, for instance, requires sponsors to have an annual income equal to the social security salary. In Denmark, sponsors must not have claimed social benefits in the three years before the application. But in Spain and the US, the partner’s foreign income also counts towards the threshold.

So what does this mean for mixed British and international families living in Europe who might want or even need to return to the UK to live?

Campaigners have complained that many Britons with foreign partners have simply been “locked abroad” or families have been separated while they try to meet the minimum income or savings requirement.

Reunite Families UK, a non-profit organisation supporting people affected by the UK spouse visa rules, says this policy causes distress, especially for children.

Some 65 percent of respondents in research carried out by the group said that their child received a diagnosis of a mental health condition due to the separation of their parents.

“Since its introduction, this policy has destroyed the family life of countless people and children,” Matteo Besana, Advocacy and Campaigns Manager at Reunite Families UK said.

“Women have been forced to become single parents to their children and live away from their partner and the father of their children only because they didn’t meet the threshold.

“As shown by our research on the mental health impact of the policy, these are scars that, particularly for children, will be carried for the rest of their lives,” Besana said.

The people most likely to be affected are women, who tend to earn less or not work because they took on caring responsibilities. Also heavily impacted are people under 30 and over 50 years of age, people living outside London and the Southeast of England where wages are higher, and those belonging to specific ethnicities, according to the Migration Observatory.

The Local spoke to two British women, in Italy and Sweden, struggling to return to the UK with their families because of these rules.

More savings needed

Sarah Douglas, who has been living in Italy since 2007, was planning to return to Scotland with her Italian husband and three children.

“It was always our long-term goal to move back to the UK after we had our children and once we’d have saved enough to buy a home in the UK,” she said.

“In hindsight, we should have gone after the Brexit referendum, but in the beginning it wasn’t clear what the final deal would be and I naively assumed that situations like mine would be taken into account and we would have the right to return… Once it did become clear, we were in the middle of the pandemic and it wasn’t the time to move,” she said.

Having stayed home to take care of the children, Sarah will find it hard to land a job near her family in Scotland that meets the minimum income required to sponsor a foreign partner for a UK visa.

Her husband, a computer programmer, has been trying to get an employment visa, “but most of them state that you must already have permission to work in the UK,” Sarah says. And applying for British citizenship is not an option for a non-UK resident spouse.

‘People need to be aware’

Sarah and her husband are trying to save as much as they can, an alternative to the income requirement, but the amount they need is rising to almost £90,000, meaning it may be a long time before they have enough to move home.

While the aim of the UK’s policy is to ensure families moving to the UK are not a burden on the taxpayer, the reality is that people arriving on a family visa are not able to claim any benefits from the UK government.

“They should judge the overall financial viability of the family unit, rather than just the earning potential of the sponsoring partner,” Sarah says.

“We could live well with my husband’s salary and he could work remotely. We are stable and financially secure, but because I don’t earn any money, they say we are not able to support ourselves.”

Sarah says that most of the British public are unaware of the minimum income requirement.

“People think if you are married, your husband is allowed to come to the UK, but when I say no, it doesn’t work like that, they are really surprised. A lot of people are not aware of how this could affect them,” she said.

Looking for a job from abroad

Another British women who lives in Sweden with her South African husband and two children and plans to move to the UK told The Local how the minimum income requirement had put them in a “precarious and stressful situation”.

The woman, who preferred to remain anonymous said: “After having the two children, I was very fortunate to find a research position and do my PhD, which is a salaried position in Scandinavia, and now that I finished, we are looking to leave.

“But I need a job in the UK to sponsor my husband, and as a new graduate with limited work experience, it is not easy. It is even more difficult when you are not in the country and I missed out on opportunities because they wanted an immediate start. I really don’t want to move without my whole family,” she said.

She says the UK’s policy is “gendered and geographically discriminatory” because it makes life harder for women and also harder for anyone who is planning to move to a part of the country that isn’t in London, where salaries are higher.

“I feel exiled from my country and separated from my family there,” she said.

Her husband, she argues, has his own company and could continue working remotely from the UK, earning well above the requirement. He would also pay taxes and national insurance while having to pay the healthcare surcharge, a form of double taxation, she argues. But that would not entitle him to a visa.

“Our house is on the market now. We have booked removal companies for the 6th of June. The dog is booked for his transport. I just think this policy is so out of touch with the modern world,” she said.

Reunite Families UK has called on the government to recognise the right for British or settled citizens to bring their close family members to the UK and scrap the minimum income requirement. Alternatively, the group says the rules should take into consideration the earning potential of both partners and consider “the best interests of children”.

A petition on the UK parliament website asks the government to reconsider the minimum income policy. If it reaches 100,000 signatures, it will have to be debated in parliament.

This article has been produced by Europe Street news.

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