Foreign Perspectives

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You may have seen some debate about whether a UK driving license remains legal when you’re actually living overseas.

Mine recently came up for renewal and I thought I’d have to change it for a French one. However, when I read the small print as to how they decide if you’re UK resident or not it turns out that, according to their own definition, I am actually legally UK resident despite having lived in France for three years!

That’s one of the odd things about living here. Even after living here for three years, it is still easier for me to prove that I live in the UK than that I live in France.

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After nearly two weeks of no ADSL, we’re finally back online, at least for the moment.

We’ve been calling France Telecom every day over that time and every day it’s a a different answer. At the start of the two weeks, the noise on the line was so bad that we couldn’t hear the guy on the fault reporting line so ended up having to call them from another phone.

Result? We’ve tested your line and it’s perfect. Emmm, we can’t hear anyone when they call as there’s so much noise on the line. No, it’s perfect.

Next day. Testing… yes, there’s a problem. We’ll send someone out. Two days later nobody and no working line so we call again. No, we’ve tested it: there’s nothing wrong. Several more attempts and we actually had someone come out. Ah, there was oxidation on the contacts, that’s why it wasn’t working.

Well, that sort-of fixed the phone. We can usually hear people now but still the ADSL wasn’t working. Called again. Yes, there’s a problem on the line: we’ll send someone out. Two days later, with nobody out: no, it’s your problem we’re charging you EUR 150 for someone to come out.

That guy actually did come out and announced that it was perfect. Still no ADSL though. Of course, the guy who came wasn’t from France Telecom so wouldn’t test the France Telecom modem for us. Thought I’d try changing the modem and cables and that worked, for a while (at a much higher speed than before) but ’tis still rather hit & miss and we can’t hear people when they call so I’m not sure how long we’ll be online this time.

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It sometimes seems that every aspect of French life needs to be documented and, for the most part, by documentation that doesn’t exist outside France.

When you move to France, you will continually be asked for your ID card which isn’t issued (yet) by the UK and quite often for your Carte de Séjour (residence permit) which, if you’re European, you’ve not been required to have for several years now. In the absence of those, your passport will obviously suffice and sometimes even a driving license.

The Livre de Famille or family book is given to those who marry in France and contains, in effect, the birth certificates of the couple and any children that they have along with the marriage certificate. Almost every contact you have with French officialdom asks you for this mainly because the French don’t issue birth certificates and the documentation that they issue instead is only valid for three months. In practice your own passport and the birth certificates of the children are the equivalent. Since the French documents expire, many people will assume that your documents do too and keep them as is the practice with the French documents; if you point out that they are certificates they’ll usually photocopy them instead.

Proof of address is obviously difficult to provide when you first move to France and in some circumstances later on too. To get around this, the French authorities will normally let you produce an “attestation” that states you live at your current address. The “attestation” is effectively a letter (in French) saying that you live there. Even the French recognise that it’s not always possible to prove that!

One oddity is that the French will often ask for the amount of income that you had in France before you came here. Now, for the majority of people the answer to this will obviously be “nothing” but that doesn’t stop the French using that information and paying you assorted social security benefits on the basis that since you didn’t earn anything in France, then clearly you didn’t earn anything elsewhere. Yes, I know that’s crazy, but they definitely pay out money on that basis. What I’m wondering is what they’ll do when we leave France as they can hardly charge us tax, social security and health insurance if we’re not here, although you never know with the French.

 This is part of our series on buying a house in France.

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