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RESIDENCY PERMITS

Reader Question: My status changed, do I need to change my French residency permit?

For foreigners in France on a visa or residency permit related to their status - such as a working visa, student visa or visitor visa - it can be difficult to know what to do when your status changes, such as when you retire, change jobs or start working after your studies have ended.

Reader Question: My status changed, do I need to change my French residency permit?
A man stands at a booth in a branch of France's national employment agency Pole Emploi in Montpellier (Photo by PASCAL GUYOT / AFP)

The Local spoke with immigration law specialist Haywood Wise to understand what foreigners should know when they find themselves in these types of situations and how to navigate them.

Should I be concerned about my right to be in France?

“If you have a valid titre de séjour, even if your situation changes, you do not have to leave the country immediately”, Maître Wise told The Local.

“First of all, a titre de séjour is a residency permit, irrespective of the type of mention. So you will maintain your residency even if you experience a change of status, as long as the card is valid. Let’s say, for example, you have a multi-year card as a spouse of a French citizen, but you are just divorcing and there are another two years left on your card.

“That would not annul or put in jeopardy your current residency permit. If that were to happen, then you should notify the préfecture once you change your address, and at that time, you can notify them of your situation”, the attorney explained.

When should I go through the administrative procedures to my status with the French government?

For those who have moved house and simply need to change their address, then this should be done as soon as it becomes effective, according to Maître Wise.

You can learn how to change your address on your residency permit HERE.

READ MORE: Reader question: Do I need to change the address on my carte de séjour if I move house?

However, for other procedures – for instance, wanting to go from the status of student to worker (salarié), it is advised to wait until the end of your current residency permit to apply for the next one. Typically, this is done in the two to three months preceding the permit’s expiration, but this may differ by préfecture.

“It is generally the case that you should not make start a change of status procedure during the interim period. The préfecture does not really want to see you again until your status expires in general”, Maître Wise clarified.

When you apply for your next residency permit, depending on how your status has changed, you may or may not be eligible for the same type of card you were on previously. 

Here are some common scenarios foreigners find themselves in with regard to status changes.

Divorce and Separation 

“If you are divorcing and you only have a temporary card, that can jeopardise your right to remain in France once the card expires. The next step will be determining whether you qualify for a new residency permit in France. If you have no activity or resources in France, then there may be a problem for being able to stay in France once the current card has expired”.

However, if you have been residing in France for over three years and you hold a carte de résident (10-year permit), then have little to worry about regarding your right to remain in France.

If you do not yet hold the carte de resident, but you qualify for it, you may still be able to apply under certain conditions. Maître Wise recommends that all people divorcing or separating from a French spouse while on a temporary residency card seek legal counsel prior to applying for their next residency permit to determine what they qualify for.

“PACs [a civil partnership] is different”, Wise told The Local. “To qualify for PACs with a French citizen, you first need to demonstrate that you’ve been living in France for at least a year with your partner”.

READ MORE: What you need to know about PACS v marriage in France

If you don’t fulfil any other criteria for a residency permit, but you have children in France, you can apply for a ‘vie privée‘ card, in order to be able to stay close to your children.

Changing jobs

For those looking to change jobs, the first question that should be asked is whether or not your current status in France requires you to have a work authorisation.

“It is a basic rule that a work authorisation is always required when working in France, and then there are various exceptions to that rule”, Wise explained.

Some of these exceptions include residency permits that themselves act as work authorisations – such as the carte de résidence or the vie familliale et privée permit. You can find more information about whether your status requires you to have a work permit or not HERE.

READ MORE: Three things to know about work permits in France

Maître Wise offered a few examples of times you might need a new work permit when changing jobs in France: “If you change employers while under a carte de sejour salarié, then you would need a new work authorisation for the new employer.

“If you came over on a travailleur temporaire status or on a travailleur saisonniere status, then you would need a new work authorisation to change jobs”. 

As for those who fall into the ‘talent passport’ category, things are more flexible. People in the various talent passport categories typically do not need work permits, but “if you are switching jobs to something that falls outside the initial requirements of your talent passport, you might need a work permit to be issued”.

While you do not need to go to the préfecture to change your titre de séjour while it is still active, you would need a new work authorisation for the new job that does not fit the conditions of your passeport talent

Having lost a job

For those whose status has changed from ’employed to unemployed’ and they were previously on a residency permit tied to their work status, then “the préfecture will be bound to renew your status as long as you have rights to chômage”, Maître Wise clarified. 

Offering another hypothetical scenario, Wise said: “Let’s say you have a carte salarié and you have been let go. If you still have unemployment rights for one more year, but your status is about to expire, then the préfecture will renew your permit for that one more year that you have access to unemployment in France”.

Finding a job 

“Making a change from visitor to professional status is generally not going to be successful, unless they have been a visitor for a very long time,” Wise cautioned. 

“Generally, when you enter as a visitor you undertook the agreement that you would not work in France, so this can be perceived as trying to circumvent the law”.

For those changing status from ‘job seeker’ to ’employed’  (those who have found a job in France while on the “Recherche d’Emploi et Création d’Entreprise” status), Wise once again advised waiting until the end of the permit before officially changing status with the préfecture. However, once the permit expires, people in this scenario will need to have a work permit from their employer to apply for the next status – either as a salarié (CDI) or as a travailleur temporaire (CDD).

In this situation, Wise explained that the work situation is not ‘opposable’ – this means that the employer is not required to demonstrate a good-faith effort has been made to find a French or European candidate via the Pôle Emploi over a period of three week to five weeks. 

All of these scenarios depend on individual situations, and would be advised to seek legal counsel. 

“In general, we are seeing a French administration that is more amenable to change of status in general. For one thing, as more applications become automated, the easier it has been for people to change status in France”, Wise concluded.

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For members

EUROPEAN UNION

What is the EU’s plan to make freedom of movement easier for non-EU residents?

Members of the European Parliament are trying to reduce the time required for non-UE citizens living in EU countries to get long-term resident status and move more easily across the bloc. But will it happen?

What is the EU's plan to make freedom of movement easier for non-EU residents?

The European Parliament said this week the period of legal residence to obtain such status should be cut from five to three years. This sounds a positive move for non-EU residents , but EU governments will have to agree to the move. What are the chances this will happen?

What is EU long-term residence?

Under a little-known EU law, third-country nationals can in theory acquire EU-wide long-term resident status if they have lived ‘legally’ in an EU country for at least five years.

They also must not have been away for more than 6 consecutive months and 10 months over the entire period (the rules are different for Brits covered by Withdrawal agreement), and can prove to have “stable and regular economic resources” and health insurance.

Applicants can also be required to meet “integration conditions”, such as passing a test on the national language or culture knowledge.

The purpose of these measures was to “facilitate the integration” of non-EU citizens who have been living in the EU for a long time, ensuring equal treatment and some free movement rights.

However in practice, this law has not worked as planned.

READ ALSO: Could it get easier for non-EU citizens to move to another EU country?

One of the problems is that most EU member states continue to issue “almost exclusively” national permits unless the applicant explicitly asks for the EU one. And many applicants are unaware of the EU residency permit.

Some countries also require employers to prove they could not find candidates in the local market before granting a permit to a non-EU citizen, regardless of their status.

So what’s happened so far?

Last year the European Commission proposed to review and simplify these rules. The European Parliament and EU Council (which is formed by EU governments) have to give their views before the final legislative text can be approved.

This week MEPs said they want to shorten to three years, instead of five, the period non-EU nationals are required to be legally resident in a member state in order to acquire EU long-term status.

They also agreed it should be possible to combine periods of legal residence in different EU member states, instead of resetting the clock at each move.

In addition, time spent for studying or vocational training, seasonal work, temporary protection (the scheme that applies to Ukrainian refugees) should be calculated too. At present, these periods do not count towards EU long-term residence.

‘Freedom of movement is an illusion for non-EU nationals’

Once long-term residence is obtained in an EU country, it should be automatically recognised at EU level too, MEPs said, asking to remove restrictions such as labour market checks or integration requirements for people who move to another EU state.

If countries require someone to speak the national language to grant the status, they should provide free courses.

Dependent children of people who already have such a permit should be granted the same status automatically, regardless of where they were born, MEPs also argued.

On the other hand, people who hold a residence permit in an EU country only on the basis of an investment scheme should not be eligible for EU long-term residence, the parliament said.

“We currently have 27 labour markets, there is no freedom of movement. That’s an illusion for third-country nationals who are on such status right now,” said Damian Boeselager, the German MEP leading on this file at the European Parliament.

“If you, to say it very harshly, want to find another job after maybe losing yours in Paris, or if you just want to develop further, you are confined to France. Otherwise, you will have to go through the complete new procedure again in another member state…”

What are the objections?

Boeselager and members of parliament who support this position argue that Europe is ageing quickly and skill shortages damage the economy, so Europe should become more attractive to non-EU workers. One way to do this is removing obstacles and making their life easier once they are in the bloc, MEPs said.

“If you look at the numbers, we’re supposed to lose over 50 million people from our workforce in Europe over the next 30 years, which just shows that we are currently in a situation where we need to rethink our talent, migration and attractiveness,” Boeselager said at a press conference.

“Even under Trump the US was more attractive for international talent than Europe… So we need somehow to get better. We need to attract international talent to the European Union. And this is also what we are trying to do with the long-term residence directive,” hr continued.

But not everyone agrees and the approval of the European Parliament position has already caused controversy.

The group of the European Conservatives and Reformists (which includes, among others, Italian party Brother of Italy, Spain’s Vox, the Sweden Democrats and Poland’s Law and Justice), as well as the Identity and Democracy groups (which includes Italy’s Lega, France’s Rassemblement National, Germany’s AfD, Denmark’s Danks Folkeparti and Austria’s FPO) object to the plan.

Conservative and far-right parties argue that migration issues should be decided at national level, the focus should be on border controls and priority for the job market should be given to own citizens. The groups also wanted more time to discuss the proposals.

The Parliament adopted its opinion anyway (with 391 votes in favour, 140 against and 25 abstentions). But the opinion of the parties opposed to the scheme will re-emerge in the discussion among EU governments.

What happens next?

Now that MEPs have their position, it is for EU governments to agree their own and then negotiate with the Parliament to come up with the final text of this law.

One of the things EU governments could do is to slow down the process or do nothing, not allowing the file to progress. New legislation should be completed by February 2024, before the European Parliament elections in May next year.

Boeselager hopes these measures can be adopted by Christmas. “We can’t go to the next elections without having these directives approved,” said Spanish MEP Javier Moreno Sanchez, who is leading the discussion on the revision of the single work and residence permit for non-EU citizens. Sanchez said he is optimistic that the Spanish government, which will take over the rotating EU presidency in the second half of 2023, will push ahead with this file.

According to the European statistical office, Eurostat, in 2021 23.7 million non-EU citizens were living in EU countries, making up 5.3 percent of the total EU population.

This article was produced by Europe Street News

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