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LIVING IN FRANCE

Can I contest the fine for breaking lockdown rules in France?

France's lockdown rules are among the strictest in Europe and police have not been shy in handing out fines to people they deem to have broken the rules - but what if you feel you were fined unfairly?

Published: 31 March 2020 16:33 CEST
Can I contest the fine for breaking lockdown rules in France?
The conditions for being allowed out during lockdown are strict. Photo: AFP

The basic premise of the lockdown in France is that you are only allowed out of your home to make essential trips, and on every trip you need to have with you a signed, dated and timed permission form.

Police are operating road blocks and stopping people on the street to check that they are complying with lockdown rules and failure to do so can result in hefty fines and even jail time.

READ ALSO France's lockdown form – your questions answered

You can be fined for being out of the house for a reason deemed 'non essential' or for not having the correctly filled out form with you, even if your trip is essential.

The accepted reasons for leaving your home are;

  • To work, if your work is essential and cannot be done from home
     
  • To shop for essential items. Most shops in France are now closed but food shops, pharmacies and tabacs (tobacco shops) remain open
     
  • For medical appointments if the appointment is urgent and cannot be done via an online appointment. Many routine hospital appointments have already been cancelled, although urgent care like cancer treatments and dialysis continues. If you have a GP appointment you are asked to choose an online appointment if possible or, if the matter can wait, reschedule it. Women are still able to access pregnancy care and abortions.
     
  • For vital family reasons eg urgent care for children or the elderly. Simply visiting family is not a good enough reason to be out and the government has previously said that no-one should be visiting people aged over 70 or with serious health conditions except to provide vital assistance. Visiting is banned at all Ehpad retirement homes and care facilities
     
  • Physical exercise. The rules on this have been tightened in recent days and this is reflected on the form. You can exercise alone, for a maximum of one hour, within 1km of your home. You can also exercise pets under the same conditions, or walk alone or with people who share the home with you.
     
  • Following a judicial or administrative summons
     
  • Participating in activities in the general interest at the request of administrative authorities. This one is a bit vague, but if you're going to use this one it would probably be wise to have some some of documentation showing that you are out at the request of your local authority.

People are also permitted to go home if they were away from their usual residence at the time of the lockdown, so tourists in France can travel to a port or airport to get home and people normally resident in France can return here. This does not include people who have a second home in France.

In the first few days of the lockdown there was some confusion over the rules and people reported being told different things by different officers.

Some people have also been given verbal warnings by police – in one case a Paris woman was warned that her clothes were not 'sporty' enough to justify a trip out for exercise.

 

In the first two weeks of lockdown police have handed out more than 200,000 fines and the fines themselves have been increased.

Your first offence will now cost you €135. If you commit second offence within 15 days, you get a €200 fine. The fine can increase to €450 if you don't pay it within 45 days.

Anyone who breaks the rules four times within 30 days faces a fine of up to €3,750 and a maximum of six months in jail. 

 

But what if, having read all that, you still believe that the fine you were given is unreasonable?

Well you can contest it, and the process is the same as for contesting speeding tickets and other fines.

If you are fined during lockdown you are given a ticket by police with details for paying the fine (police will not ask you to hand over cash in the street, as some scam artists have done).

If you want to contest it you can do so online with the Agence Nationale de Traitement Automatisé des Infractions (National Agency for Automated Offence Processing) in the désignation et contestation section.

You will be asked to fill in a form withe the details of your fine and you will then be invited to state the reasons you believe it was unreasonable.

All appeals must be filed within 45 days of the fine being given.

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TRAVEL NEWS

What’s the deal with passport stamping in France?

There are clear guidelines in place about who should have their passport stamped when they enter or leave France - but the letter of the law doesn't always seem to be applied on the ground. Here's what you need to know.

Published: 17 May 2024 14:24 CEST
What's the deal with passport stamping in France?

When you pass through a French border control post, officers will check your passport and – in some cases – stamp the date of your entry or exit of the country onto one of the blank pages in the booklet.

Although the system should be clear and simple, it becomes complicated when conflicting information is given on the ground.

Here’s what the rules say, and whether it’s really a problem if your passport is incorrectly stamped.

Who should be stamped?

The purpose of the date stamps for entry and exit is to calculate how long you have been in France, and therefore whether you have overstayed your allowed time – whether that is the time allowed by a short-stay Schengen visa or the visa-free 90-day allowance that certain non-EU nationals benefit from. 

Those people who are exempt from 90-day restrictions should therefore not have their passports stamped.

EU passport – people who have an EU passport should not have it stamped, because they have the right to unlimited stays due to EU freedom of movement.

Dual nationals – people who have passports of both EU and non-EU countries should not be stamped when they are travelling on their EU passport. However, because the passports of dual nationals are not ‘linked’, those travelling on their non-EU passports will be stamped, unless they have other proof of residency.

READ ALSO What are the rules for dual-nationals travelling in France?

French residents – the passports of non-EU citizens who have a residency permit in France (carte de séjour) should not be stamped, because they have the right to stay in France for as long as their permit is valid.

Visa holders – people who have a long-stay visa or a short-stay visitor visa should not be stamped, because they have the right to stay in France for as long as their visa is valid. 

Tourists/visitors – people making short visits to France who do not have a visa should be stamped, with the stamps keeping track of their 90-day allowance. Visitors from nationalities who do not benefit from the 90-day rule (eg Indians) are also stamped.

Travel practicalities

When crossing a French border, you should present your passport along with other documents – visa or carte de séjour – if relevant. Don’t wait for border guards to ask whether you are a resident.

It should be noted that the carte de séjour is not a travel document and cannot be used to cross borders, not even internal Schengen zone borders. The only valid travel documents for entering France are a passport or national ID card. Any other forms of ID – driving licence, residency card etc – cannot be used for travel purposes.

Border problems

While the rules on stamping are simple in theory, many readers of The Local have reported having their passports incorrectly stamped at the border, and this seems to be a particular problem for non-EU nationals who are resident in France.

Travellers are also often given incorrect information by border guards – for example being told that only holders of the post-Brexit Article 50 TUE carte de séjour are exempt from stamping, that all non-EU nationals must have their passports stamped or that only being married to a French national exempts you from stamping.

None of these are correct.

It’s also sometimes the case that people whose passports should be stamped – tourists, visitors and second-home owners who don’t have a visa – do not receive the stamp. For frequent visitors this can be a problem because it looks as though they have had a long stay in France, due to their exit not being recorded.

The system of stamping itself is also a bit haphazard with stamps scattered throughout the passport book in random order, so border guards sometimes make mistakes and miss an entry or exit stamp and therefore think that people have overstayed when they haven’t.

So how much of a problem actually is it if your passport is wrongly stamped?

It’s one thing to know the rules yourself, it’s quite another to have an argument with a border guard, in French, when a long queue is building behind you. Numerous Local readers have reported feeling that they had no choice but to accept a stamp when an implacable guard insisted upon it.

But is this really a problem?

One thing is clear – if you are a resident of France then you have the right to re-enter, and your proof of residency (visa or carte de séjour) takes precedence over any passport stamps. So it’s not a question of being barred from the country – it can, however, be inconvenient as it might lead to delays at the border while your passport record is queried.

Meanwhile people who did not receive correct exit stamps can be incorrectly told that they have over-stayed and even be liable for a fine. 

Will the new EES passport control system improve this?

Theoretically, the EU’s new Entry & Exit System – which does away with the manual stamping of passports – should get rid of these problems.

However, as we have seen, theory and what actually happens on the ground are two different things.

The EES system, due to come into effect later this year, brings in two main changes – it makes passport checks more secure by adding diometric data such as fingerprints and facial scans and it does away with manual stamping of passports and replaces it with scans which automatically calculate how long people have been in France.

You can read full details of how it works HERE. 

So that should eliminate the problems of unclear stamps, stamps being read wrongly or passports not getting the stamps they need.

Residents in France – carte de séjour and visa holders – are not required to complete EES checks and should have a separate system at ports, airports and railway terminals.

However, at present it’s pretty common for border guards to give incorrect information to non-EU residents who are resident in the EU – let’s hope that they are properly briefed before EES is deployed.

Have you had problems with passports being incorrectly stamped? Please share your experiences in the comments section below

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