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FRENCH CITIZENSHIP

Can driving offences prevent you getting French citizenship or residency?

One of the requirements for fulfilling criteria for French citizenship through naturalisation is a clean criminal record. Does this mean fines for traffic offences disqualify you?

Can driving offences prevent you getting French citizenship or residency?
(Photo by Thomas SAMSON / AFP)

It’s fairly common in France for all drivers, including foreign motorists perhaps not used to the rules or changing speed limits, to commit driving offences.

Whether being caught on a radar for driving too fast, not stopping at a stop sign – not always as obvious as it sounds,  or perhaps not giving way for someone arriving from the right – the driving offences can add up as the points on your license dwindle.

But could these driving offences thwart your bid to become French or even just gain residency?

The short answer is probably not.

Citizenship is not usually denied for relatively minor law-breaking, such as speeding fines. And that’s despite a case in July 2019 in which a nurse was initially refused citizenship on the grounds that she worked too hard and failed to “comply with the law” on working hours.

During the citizenship application process, as well as language and integration tests, you have to provide proof that you have no criminal record over the past 10 years – including, if necessary, evidence of a clean record from other counties in which you were resident.

Applicants must not have been convicted of a crime resulting in a jail term of more than 6 months, or have been convicted of a crime or offence that breaches or attacks the interests of the French state. Moreover, those who apply for citizenship through naturalisation – rather than by ascendancy or marriage – also need to demonstrate ‘good moral conduct’.

On the whole, that rules out most – but certainly not all – driving offences.

What if you already have citizenship

If you have acquired French nationality, it can be contested within two years if it is found that the legal conditions for obtaining it were not met, or were obtained fraudulently. 

Furthermore, nationality may be withdrawn if the holder’s conduct is contrary to the interests of France.

Finally, citizenship may be refused or revoked in the event of a particularly serious crime, such as:.

  • Conviction for acts against the fundamental interests of the nation, or conviction for serious offences such as  acts of terrorism;
  • Conviction for crimes considered to be crimes against the public administration (crimes committed by persons holding a public office);
  • Conviction for acts of insubordination in relation to performance of national service;
  • Engaging, for the benefit of a foreign state, in acts that are incompatible with the quality of French national and commission of acts that are prejudicial to the interests of France. No prior conviction is necessary.

Importantly, revocation of French nationality may be decided only if the following conditions are met:

  • You have acquired French nationality by naturalisation, ascendancy, or marriage. Anyone of French nationality by birth cannot lose it;
  • You have another nationality. It is not possible to make a person stateless.

France already can and does deport foreigners found guilty of serious crimes, while being convicted of a crime in France can also prevent you from being able to renew your visa or residency card.

If you are convicted of a crime and imprisoned in France, you can be served with an interdiction du territoire français – a ban from French territory. This is not automatic for all jailed foreigners, and is usually reserved for offences such as drug-trafficking, violent crime or terror offences.

What about residency rights?

Foreigners who have residency rights in France will periodically need to renew their visa or carte de séjour – and having a criminal conviction could mean that your renewal request is turned down. This is usually only the case if you have been convicted of a serious crime, but it’s not exclusively the most serious offences.

Between October 2020 and June 2021 8,031 carte de séjour renewals were refused on the grounds of criminality. Of these, 27 percent were for serious offences including assault, attempted murder, organised fraud and threatening a public official.

However, 5.9 percent were for driving offences – the official data does not specify the type of offence, but it seems safe to assume they were at the heavier end of the offence spectrum – 6.3 percent were following a domestic violence conviction, and 7 percent were for offences of begging or soliciting.

Member comments

  1. I agree with this article. What you have to present to apply for French citizenship, is a “Casier judiciaire vierge” – in other words, proof that you don’t have a criminal record. I imagine that if you do have a criminal record, they would then have to consider whether this prevents you from being allowed citizenship, but I, in spite of several traffic offences (exceeding the speed limit, not respecting “stop” signs, etc.), don’t have one, and this hasn’t prevented me from working for the French government, nor acquiring citizenship. I suppose a very serious traffic offence probably would give you a criminal record.

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FRENCH CITIZENSHIP

EXPLAINED: How to use France’s new online portal for citizenship

The French government has opened a new online system for foreigners applying for citizenship. Loire-based journalist and wannabe Frenchman John Walton takes a look at how to use the new NATALI citizenship portal.

EXPLAINED: How to use France's new online portal for citizenship

Since I’ve lived in France, I’ve by and large been impressed by the country’s digital public services, especially compared with the US and UK, and that was also the case with applying for nationality using the NATALI online portal

Submitting my dossier was an entirely digital process using the new nationality portal. Since there are many pathways to apply for nationality (marriage to a French citizen, descent from a French person, and so on), the service-public.fr website has a special simulateur widget that helps you narrow down the pathway suitable to you.

There’s also a specific simulation that then provides you a list of documents based on your situation.

As a célibataire, full-time employed salarié US-UK dual national homeowner without children, born outside France, applying based solely on five years of residence with the special Brexit-flavoured titre de séjour residence permit, mine narrowed down a total 15 documents I needed to provide:

  • Passport;
  • ID photos;
  • €55 in timbre fiscale;
  • Titre de séjour;
  • Birth certificate (plus approved translations);
  • Parents’ birth and marriage certificates (plus approved translations);
  • Casier judiciaire and overseas equivalents (plus approved translations);
  • House title (acte de propriété);
  • Tax returns (avis) for 3 years;
  • P237 bordereau de situation fiscale covering 3 years (available via the tax office);
  • Certificat de travail (this is an attestation from your employer, in the standard format “I the undersigned, Mme X of company Y at address Z, certify that Mr A of address B with Sécu number C, is employed as with a CDI as a job title D since date E, and he’s not on any probation nor has he resigned) 
  • Employment contract;
  • Last 3 pay slips;
  • Pay slips for November and December of the last 3 years;
  • Language qualification to at least B1 level

READ ALSO The ultimate guide for how to get French citizenship

As it turns out I wasn’t asked for an ID photo — perhaps because I have an existing titre de séjour. Note that you will also have to input your every one of your home addresses over the last 10 years down to the specific day that you moved in and out, although no documentary evidence was required online.

Best to ensure that you have that information to hand, and I absolutely plan to bring a couple of bank statements, utility bills and similar to my assimilation interview.

The site also asked for a recent proof of address — the usual phone bill seemed to suffice. I found that the key to making this simple is collating all the information you’ll need and figuring out what accompanying documentation (or, indeed, in the case of the language tests, what exams) you can upload to provide it.

Tips for the process

You can either create a new login or use a FranceConnect login from another government service (such as the health service’s ameli.fr or the tax office’s impots.gouv.fr — I used the latter).

Pleasingly, this prefills all the information that the service already holds on you. I’m a millennial digital native with a reputation as a spreadsheet fancier, so I organised the process with a one-page spreadsheet to track the documentation. I also numbered each of the types of information, with a corresponding folder number on my computer, both for tracking and for the upload process.

That meant it took really only a few minutes to work through the submission site and upload my documents one by one. I plan to file the paper originals and printouts of these documents in a tabbed file when, fingers crossed, I’m called to the assimilation interview.

READ ALSO QUIZ: Could you pass the French citizenship interview?

I was very impressed by the uploading process: the site allows for multiple uploads at the same time (so you can select all of the payslips you’ve carefully put into a folder at once, for example) and file size limits are a very reasonable 10MB so there’s no need to resize your smartphone picture scans.

If you’re an iPhone user and have used your phone to scan pictures, they may be saved as HEIC files rather than JPGs. You’ll need to convert them (I used the Preview app on my computer) to upload.

I’d highly recommend having very clear filenames for your documentation, including translations — “certificat de naissance – mère – original”, “certificat de naissance – mère – traduction”, and so on — rather than leaving it as “IMG1234” or whatever.

I did this in French to make it as easy as possible for whoever reviews my file. Note also that where translations are needed that there is a separate upload button for translations.

I was glad that I’d had the foresight to add the word “traduction” to the names of these files!

Lessons learned

The time and effort in this process was mainly around squaring away my overseas documentation, which took a couple of months. Given that language exams are only held a few times a year, these is probably the first thing to arrange.

As someone with grade A French at A-level, who uses French on a daily basis in my local village, I popped over to my nearest centre for a morning of exams, and took the B1 level test. 

READ ALSO TEST: Is your level of French good enough for citizenship and residency?

Once you’ve booked in the language exam, start on your overseas documentation. This, especially from the UK, can be expensive, complicated and can take months.

(The UK’s police certificate website here is a particular shocker: it looks like it is a scam website, the processing time is outrageously slow and it only sends out physical forms. The French casier judiciaire version is free, online and immediate.)

By contrast, I found that securing every piece of French documentation, from the P237 form I’d never heard of, to the casier judiciaire police check that I’d never needed, all the way down to getting an electronic timbre fiscale, was easy, digitised, free and usually instantaneous.

READ ALSO Reader question: Will a criminal record stop you getting French citizenship?

Do take a good look at example documents to understand exactly what you’re being asked for before you apply for them from your country of origin, or where you may have lived over the past 10 years. For example: my parents’ marriage certificate from the UK didn’t include their dates and places of birth, just their ages at the time of marriage.

I found an excellent and very responsive local translator “agréé” (aka a translator “assermenté-e” or approved translator) from the official list of certified translators (provided). It is best to approach a translator at an early stage to ensure availability and check pricing.

They may also be helpful with some of the finer details of what documents are needed. Mine was happy to review, make minor edits to, and then stamp some earlier, non-agrée translations of several of my documents, which cut the cost somewhat.

READ ALSO How much does it cost to get French citizenship?

Overall, and certainly in contrast with the horror stories I’ve heard from friends applying for US and UK nationality, the process of submitting my dossier for French citizenship was simple, inexpensive and straightforward. If you’re not a confident online operator, you might find the website slightly overwhelming, but there is a national network of digital help points if you’re concerned. 

Now, I wait… Wish me luck at the interview.

Next steps

Submitting your dossier online is step one of applying for French citizenship, a process that takes on average between 18 months and two years. Find the full process outlined HERE

Photo: John Walton

John Walton is a joint US-UK national who lives in the département of Loire in central France. He works as a journalist specialising in travel and aviation and tweets as @thatjohn – find more of his work here

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