Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK
For members

VISAS

What to do if your French carte de séjour is lost or stolen

If you're a foreigner living in France, you may need a carte de séjour to prove your right of residency - but what happens if this precious document is lost or stolen?

Published: 17 November 2021 12:53 CET
Updated: 4 October 2023 08:52 CEST
A woman meets with a French immigration official in the hope of obtaining a carte de séjour.
Applying to replace a lost carte de séjour in France can be a frustrating process. (Photo by THOMAS COEX / AFP)

If you’re a non-EU citizen and you’re living in France you will almost certainly need to get a carte de séjour residency permit, and keep it up to date to prove your right of residency.

If your card is lost, or you fall victim to pickpockets, you will need to replace it.

Online

For most people, the process of requesting a duplicata or replacement of your carte de séjour is quite simple and can be done online, via this page. 

There is, however, a €225 fee, or €75 fee if you are a student or applied for your card as part of a family.   

You will need to submit the following documents electronically: 
  • A self-written document, declaring that you have lost the carte de séjour (you can find an example here – but obviously, remove the letterhead;
  • A copy of your original carte de séjour (if you have one – it’s recommended that everyone photograph the front and back of their card when they get it, just in case);
  • A copy of your passport (including pages with ID information and and entry stamps);
  • A copy of your birth certificate; 
  • If your right of residency comes through marriage or family, a copy of your partner/family member’s carte de séjour or ID card, as well as your marriage certificate; 
  • Proof of address;
  • Three ID photos; 
  • Proof of payment of the fee (if you are a victim of domestic violence or human trafficking then the replacement is free)

If you have the necessary documentation, this process should take a matter of weeks.

If you lose your carte de séjour overseas 

Things become a little more difficult if you lose your carte de séjour overseas. 

You must first declare the loss to local police authorities and then to your closest French embassy or consulate (who will want to see proof that you have declared your loss to the police as well as a déclaration sur l’honneur).

Be sure to have official written evidence of both declarations, signed or stamped by the authorities – you may be asked to provide it as evidence when asking for a replacement. 

In order to return to France, you may need to ask for a visa de retour from the embassy or consulate concerned. Before giving you this visa, they will need to verify that you once obtained a carte de séjour from whichever préfecture you applied to. A harrowing advisory is written on service-public.fr: “This investigation can be lengthy.”

Upon your return to France, you must apply for a duplicata via this website. 

You will need all the same documents as if you had lost your carte de séjour in France. 

Post-Brexit carte de séjour

If you are British and were living in France before December 31st 2021, and therefore got your carte de séjour under the Withdrawal Agreement, there are a couple of things to be aware of.

In order to create the online account necessary to demand a duplicata, you must enter your visa or titre de séjour number (also known as a numéro AGDREF). This is a 13-digit number which on a standard carte de séjour is either along the top or the side, as below.

On the post-Brexit carte de séjour it is listed as the Numéro personnel and is just above the signature on the card.

Under the Withdrawal Agreement, the post-Brexit carte de séjour was free, and it seems that UK nationals who have lost their cards are not being asked to pay a fee for a replacement, although this may vary.

READ ALSO Visas and residency permits: How to move to France (and stay here)

Préfecture appointment

If you’re unable to use the online system you will have to either email, call or show up at the préfecture and explain the situation in as much detail as possible. 

Different préfectures have different systems but in Paris, where carte de séjour applications are dealt with by the Préfecture du Police, the online form to send such a mail, can be found here or email [email protected] 

Préfectures will then send you either an appointment, or a letter inviting you to visit when convenient. Some have their own list of required documents which can be different to the ones demanded by the online portal, so take careful note of what they are asking you for.

Most préfectures will process your request and then send out the card in the post within four weeks. 

Member comments

  1. Incredibly helpful… I just need to change my address on my CdS, but the online website doesn’t recognize my information. Good to know this was a common bug. I’ve been doesn’t going back and forth with the online help contact, and getting nowhere. Unfortunately, my local prefecture (Grenoble) doesn’t have an easy way to make an online appointment for this. And they don’t like you to show up with no appointment.

  2. The online system doesn’t always work. All I could get was an error message.
    The helpline was NOT helpful. In the end all they could suggest was visiting the prefecture. I did that only to be lead to a computer to complete the application online.
    I gave them a copy of my Gendarmes’ report of the theft, copy of the original document that came with the Carte de Sejour, my passport and photographs. I was then told I would be contacted. That was 25 July and and I have heard nothing.

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

LEARNING FRENCH

Is the English language really just ‘badly pronounced French’?

A French linguist has been making waves with his boldly-titled book 'The English language does not exist - it's just badly pronounced French', but does the professor actually have a point?

Published: 23 April 2024 14:35 CEST
Is the English language really just 'badly pronounced French'?

The French linguist Bernard Cerquiglini is clear that the title of his book should be taken with humour and a pinch of salt, beginning his work by explaining that it is a ‘bad faith proposition’.

Clearly, the English language does exist and equally clearly the French are a little uneasy about it – with numerous laws, national bodies and local initiatives attempting to fight back against the anglicisms that now litter everyday speech, from ‘c’est cool’ to ‘un job’. 

But Cerquiglini argues that the supposed ‘influx’ of English words that are now used in France, especially tech-related terms, is nothing compared to what happened when French literally invaded English in the Middle Ages.

And the close similarity that the two languages enjoy today – around 30 percent of English words are of French origin – speaks to this entwined history.

“You can also see my book as an homage to the English language, which has been able to adopt so many words… Viking, Danish, French, it’s astonishing,” he told AFP.

The history

The key date in the blending of English and French is the Norman conquest of 1066, when Duke William of Normandy invaded England with a small group of Norman knights and made himself the English king William the Conqueror.

What happened next was a radical re-ordering of society in which English nobles were displaced and William’s knights were installed as a new French-speaking (or at least Norman-speaking) ruling class. 

The use of French by the ruling classes continued into the 13th and 14th centuries, by which time French was the official language of the royal courts, diplomacy, the law, administration and trade – meaning that ambitious English people had no choice but to learn French in order to take part in official or legal processes. 

Cerquiglini says that half of all English’s borrowings from French took place between 1260-1400, with a heavy slant towards words related to nobility, trade, administration or the law.

But a large group of non-native speakers meant that the French spoken in England was already starting to evolve, and the French words ended up with different pronunciations or even a different meaning. 

As early as 1175, the records show a Frenchman in England snootily remarking that: “My language is good, because I was born in France”. 

English and French started to part ways from the mid-1400s, by which time the two countries no longer shared royalty (the last English possession in France, the port of Calais, was lost to the French in 1558) and gradually systems such as the law courts and trade began to be conducted in English.

French remained widely spoken as a second language by the nobility and the elite right up until the early 20th century and French is still the most widely-taught language in UK schools.

The similarities

It’s not always easy to distinguish between English words that have a French root and those that have a Latin root, but linguists estimate that around 29 percent of English words come from French, another 29 percent from Latin, 26 percent from German and the rest from other languages.

But many of the English words that do have a clear French root are related to nobility, administration, politics and the law.

For example the French words gouvernement, parlement, autorité and peuple are clearly recognisable to English speakers. Likewise budget, revenus, enterprise and taxe, plus avocat, cour, juge, magistrat and evidence.

Amusingly, the French and the English obviously found time to share many insults, including bâtard [bastard], crétin, imbecile, brute and stupide.

Adaptation

But most of the people in England who were speaking French did not have it as their mother tongue, so the language began to adapt. For example the French à cause de literally translates into English as ‘by cause of’ which over time became the English word ‘because’.

There are also words that started out the same but changed their meaning over time – for example the English word ‘clock’ comes from the French ‘cloche’ (bell), because in the Middle Ages church bells were the most common method of keeping track of the time for most people.

When the mechanical clock began to appear from the 14th century onwards, the French used a new term – une horloge – but the English stuck with the original.

The differences

One of the big differences between English and French is that English simply has more words – there are roughly 170,000 words in the English language, compared to about 135,000 in French.

And at least part of this comes from English being a ‘blended’ language – that English people hung on to their original words and simply added the French ones, which is why you often get several different English words that have the same translation in French eg clever and intelligent both translate into French as ‘intelligent’.

Another difference represents the class divide that the Norman invasion imposed between the French nobles and the English labourers.

For example the words pig and cow both have Anglo-Saxon roots, while pork and beef come from French (porc and boeuf) – so when the animal is in the field being looked after by English peasants it has an Anglo-Saxon name, but by the time it is on the plate being eaten by posh people, it becomes French.

There’s also a tendency in English for the more everyday words to have Anglo-Saxon origins while the fancier words have French origins – eg to build (English) versus to construct (French). In French construire is used for both. Or to feed (English) versus to nourish (French) – in French both are nourrir.

Faux amis

One consequence of English and French being so closely linked in the bane of every language-learner’s life – les faux amis (false friends).

These are words that look and sound very similar, but have a completely different meaning. If you don’t know the French word for something you can have a stab at saying the English word with a French pronunciation – and often you will be right.

But sometimes you will be wrong, and sometimes it will be embarrassing.

READ ALSO The 18 most embarrassing French ‘false friends’

Often, faux amis are words that have changed their meaning in one language but not the other – for example the French word sensible means sensitive, not sensible – which is why you can buy products for peau sensible (sensitive skin).

But it once meant sensitive in English too – for example in the title of Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility – over time the meaning of the English word adapted but the French one stayed the same.

The title

And a word on that title – La langue anglaise n’existe pas, C’est du français mal prononcé (the English language does not exist, it’s just badly pronounced French) is actually a quote from former French prime minister Georges Clemenceau.

He did apparently speak English, but doesn’t appear to have been very fond of England itself – his other well-known quote on the topic is: “L’angleterre n’est qu’une colonie français qui a mal tourné” – England is just a French colony gone wrong.  

SHOW COMMENTS