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A car is usually essential in France
Once you have finally waded through all the paperwork, signed every sheet of the sale documents and initialled a thousand more pieces of legal paper, you can relax. You have bought your house in France, and you are ready to begin your new life as an ex-pat (Living in France). Before you relax completely, though, have you thought about a car and registering it? Almost everyone needs one these days, and as so many of us move to the French countryside, or at least to small market towns, a car really is as essential as a home. And registering it is must, although it must be said that if you are bringing your car from the UK to France, it is still possible to keep your UK licence and plates (see our article Car Insurance in France).
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Registering a car in France involves getting a carte grise (grey card) and new French number plates
And just so you are clear from the outset, what you are trying to obtain by registering your car in France, is a carte grise with a new registration number for your car, which you can then use to go and buy some new French number plates.
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Registering a car in France will involve paper
Of course you knew that you would need a car and would need to go about registering it. It's just that it paled into insignificance alongside the massive undertaking of buying a house. Registering a car can't be as complicated as that, surely? Well, no it isn't... usually. What you have to remember, in anything you undertake from now on, is that this is France, and things are done differently here. For one thing, where one bit of paper would have sufficed in the UK, in France you will need a minimum of twenty. France is drowning in a sea of paper, and registering your car is another drop in that ocean. As long as you are prepared for this, and make the paper chase in good time, you will mange fine.
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Take your old car to France or buy a new car in France?
Perhaps the first decision that you need to make is whether to keep your English car, or whether it makes more sense to trade it in and buy a car in France. To a certain extent, of course, this depends on how much available cash you have. If money is no object, then it is probably easier all round to sell your old car in the UK, move to France and buy a brand new car.
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Buying a new French car – registering is simple
If you buy a new French car in France, registering and indeed everything is simple. The dealer will do all the paperwork for you, and issue you with the carte grise or grey card, which is the equivalent of the log book and is the certificate you are given showing your car has been registered. The only point perhaps worth making here is that it is probably wise to do as the French do and to buy a car that is manufactured in France, by one of the main French car companies such Renault, Peugeot or Citroën.
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Most cars driven in France are manufactured in France
You will quickly notice that a massive percentage of cars on the roads of France are manufactured by these French firms, and it is not just as a result of French national loyalty (although this undoubtedly is a factor!). French cars are simply so much easier to find parts for if they go wrong, and so much easier to find experienced mechanics for too!
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Buying a second hand car in France
The biggest single thing that you need to be aware of here is that second hand cars are expensive in France. A quick glance at the petits annonces or small ads sections of local papers, or a look through a car sales magazine will show you instantly that the second hand market here is much more expensive than in England. It is also more expensive than that of Spain, so one possible solution for those who live in the south of the country is to purchase a car in Spain, and then import it into France. Of course, it then needs to be re-registered for France in the same way as an English car. (Second hand France.)
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Registering a second hand car in France
If you do buy a second hand car in France, there is a procedure that you will need to go through in order to register it. The vendor should give you all the existing paperwork, including the current carte grise, and a bill of sale. You then have around fifteen days to apply for a new carte grise, as this is not passed from owner to owner but is cancelled and replaced. The easiest way to deal with the paperwork involved here is to present yourself at your Mairie, where they will not only do all the paperwork for you but also tell you exactly what it will cost. Some Mairie staff will even post the application for you! In some cases, it may be necessary to have the car put through the Côntrole Technique (French MOT) again, although the vendor is supposed to do this as a routine part of the sale if the car is old enough to warrant it.
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Importing a car from the UK and registering it in France
If you decide that you want to bring your car with you to France, the situation becomes a little more complicated. It is currently possible, even if you are a French resident, to keep your UK driving licence and UK plates or you can change to French plates and a French licence. It is difficult to ascertain exactly what the rules are, as every person or authority approached tells a different story, and rules can vary from department to department, and from time to time. At the time of writing, France is settling into a new regime under a new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, so everything is liable to change. The best way to go ahead is probably to take current local advice about registering a car, from your Mairie in the first instance, and then from the prefecture or capital town of your department.
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Time within which you must register cars in France varies
In the past, people have been informed that they have only one month... or three months... or was that two(?!) in which to change the registration of their car to a French one. We were informed (by our French insurance agency) that we had a year. Three years later we still have the English registered van, still insured with the same agency, although we have now decided to jump through the bureaucratic hoops and French plate it, perhaps more on moral grounds than anything else! Whatever the time limit, however, if you are going to stay in France indefinitely, and you are intending to keep your British vehicle indefinitely, the chances are that at some point you will decide (or be asked) to sort out registering it and putting on French plates.
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How to re-register a car in France with French plates
Doing anything in France is an exercise in paperwork, so the first thing you need to know is exactly what paperwork you have to assemble with regard to registering a car. You can obtain a list from the local offices of DRIRE (Direction Régionale de l'Industrie, de la Recherche et de l'Environnement), or perhaps as we did, from our insurers. Others have once more found the Mairie to be extremely helpful as regards this too, but it is of course, dependant on the individuals concerned. The steps described below are subject to regional and temporal differences, but provide a description of a likely sequence of events in the registering of a car in France!
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Registering a car in France - step one... the English bit!
This is the easy bit, as you can do this in English. Notify the DVLA that you are permanently exporting your vehicle to France, and obtain from them a certificate of export, or V561.
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Registering a car in France - step two… sorry, it's all in French now...
Change the headlights to right hand driving position. This is not cheap, and the temporary stickers that you use when on holiday just will not do. You need to fit blocs optiques. Most good garages will be able to do this, but make an appointment in advance.
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Registering a car in France - step three… the Côntrole Technique
Now you have the headlights, you can get the Côntrole Technique, which is the French version of the MOT. These are performed at literally hundreds of garages around the towns and villages. If your French is good (Learning French) it doesn't matter which you choose to use, but otherwise, if you know people locally then word of mouth is a good guide as to which garage is likely to be helpful to you as a non French speaking Brit! If your car needs further work you will be given a time limit (it was two weeks when I last had mine done) to correct any problems and re-test.
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Registering a car in France - step four ... Certificate of Conformity
This is a vital part of registering your car in France, and it is the one that seems to give the most problems. Difficulties can arise with unusual vehicles, or cars which had been imported to Britain originally. The Certificate of Conformity is the manufacturers' assurance that the vehicle copies with current relevant legislation. It used to be the case that a manufacturer would supply this without a fee and without a fuss, as long as the car was a recognised model, and had a counterpart in France. Now there is a charge of €131. This certificate must be an original document, not a photocopy.
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Difficulties to be expected in registering older or unsual cars in France
Difficulties are likely to arise with older or unusual cars, or ones that do not have an equivalent in France. Older cars may be issued with a Type Approval Certificate, and your dealer should be able to advise on this. If your car is an import to Britain, and there is no equivalent model in France, you could have your work cut out. I am sure that there is a way to do it, but I would not advise attempting it unless you have bags of time, endless patience, a relentlessly optimistic disposition and are in no hurry at all. Am I making the situation clear?
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Registering a car in France - step five... tax certificate
Now take all the paperwork you have amassed so far and attend your local Centre des Impots. The purpose of this is to obtain a certificate, the Quitas Fiscal, that will show that there is no duty payable on the vehicle. The paperwork required to effect this (you will have assembled quite a bit by now...) includes the UK Log Book, V561 certificate of export, proof of residence in France (utilities bill etc.), original invoice from the purchase of the vehicle showing the name of the previous owner and the price paid, Côntrole Technique Certificate, and the Certificate of Conformity. Oh, and did I mention that you also need proof of your identity, so take your passport too. It is also a good idea, as with any bureaucratic exercise in France, to take along around five photocopies of… everything, just in case. You think I'm exaggerating?
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Registering a car in France - step six... the carte grise at last!
Finally, weighed down by all your bits of paper, you are now ready to attend the préfecture to make the registration and receive your carte grise. You will need to complete a Demande de Certificat d'Immatriculation, pay your fee (which varies according to the power of the car) and then the fun begins. You may be lucky, and receive your new registration immediately... (really, there are reports of this occurring!) in which case off you go to buy your new plates and consider yourself French! Sadly, however, this can all take a little longer. There are also reports of cases where people have had to return home, carte griseless, and wait with baited breath for some seeks for La Poste to turn up with the much needed and hard won documents.
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Registering a car in France - step seven... relax!
Whichever scenario is yours, however, once you have succeeded in registering your car you may pat yourself on the back. Now you can relax... for a while, anyway!
Additional articles which may be of interest:
Car Insurance in France
House Insurance in France
Travelling to France with Pets
French Connections
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About the author
Joanna Simm moved to the Languedoc area of south-west France in October 2004 having found her property through French Property Links.
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your questions...
1. A visitor to the site asks about Controle Techniques and MOTs (added 8/4/08)...
Hello - we have lived in the Creuse for the past two years and we brought our Ford Transit Van and our Escort 1.8 from England with us. Our French household insurance company insured our Transit and issued us with a French window sticker and told us we had three months or twelve months grace to get it changed to French registration. Your webpage on this subject says that, Step 3, was to get a Controle Technique (French MOT). When we took our vehicle to the local Controle Technique Station they told us we could not have a Controle Technique carried out until we had Step 6, the carte grise! We then drove to Gueret to sort out the carte grise and were given a load of papers in French and told that we would need a Controle Technique to be able to get the carte grise. Next week we will phone the Ford dealer in Gueret to see if they will supply us with a Certificate of Conformity.
In another paragraph headed "Time within which you must register cars in France varies", you mention that after three years you still had a English registered van, still insured with the same agency which is exactly the situation we have. My question on this issue is, do you have a French Controle Technique to replace the English MOT certificate? Because our English MOT has expired which is why we took our Transit Van to have the Controle Technique carried out! Any advice you have to offer would be most appreciated on this subject.
And here is a bit more info for you. We drove to Limoges yesterday (in our Ford Escort hatchback which is still on English tax, insurance and MOT, not our Transit Van), to the main Ford dealer for our area after speaking to them by phone. They looked at our car and for a Certificate of Conformity from them via Ford, Paris, France they want €131.00 but they say we have to first have new European headlights fitted, their price about €450.00 and they say, they can then send the forms they are filling out for the car to Ford Paris to get a Certificate of Conformity for us which they will give to us when we pay them €131.00. In other words the Certificate of Conformity from the Ford agent is not free of charge any more. They tell us that once we have paid and received the Certificate of Conformity they can then carry out a Controle Technique which is €89.00, and that we can then take these and all of our other documents to Gueret, Prefecture to get a carte grise which they think will be about €130.00 or so. We hope we can then get a new French registration number - which we hope simply means buying a set of French number plates! The Ford dealer says the Certificate of Conformity could take anything up to four weeks but of course we don't know the timing on the remainder of the process.
When we got back to Bourganeuf we went to our French household insurance agent (with whom we took out French insurance for the Transit van two years ago), and took out French insurance cover for the Escort. They supplied us with the Certificate d' Assurance to stick on the windscreen, so now there is another English registered car in France with English number plates and French windowsticker, with a soon to expire MOT.
So, you can certainly see that there are varying opinions on how to go about it all!
Jo Rhodes, editor of French Property Links replies:
I have now heard back from my colleague about these confusing issues, after she has discussed this with her husband, who is the one who mainly deals with such things! She says:
"I think this is going to be one of those things where everyone you meet has a different story... there are so many things like that in France!!! We have been variously told that:
a) You cannot get insurance at all for an English plated vehicle.
b) You can insure it for a year and no more (then we continued to insure ours for three years).
c) You can insure it for as long as you want with English plates, no problem (we are currently doing so).
d) It is no longer necessary to change the plates as it is an EU country.
Where is the truth? The article was written with information I was given at the time, personal experiences only prove how very differently things can turn out. I learn as I live... this is life here! So these are our experiences, right or wrong:
a) It is a fact that you need the Controle Technique BEFORE the carte grise... to say otherwise is wrong.
b) We do have a French Controle Technique to replace the English MOT.
c) Our insurers have now insisted we French plate (after, perhaps, the accident my husband recently claimed for!!)... but still three and a half years on.
d) The headlights... outrageously expensive says my husband. Try to buy them in the UK or try Ebay. We have bought car parts from there before... prices much lower... we paid GBP 40.00 each for Transit ones ...NEW! Or try a scrap yard in France.
e) The 131 Euro charge for a Certificate of Conformity is apparently now a normal price, depending on various circumstances and if they like the look of you or not sort of criteria... as ever in rural France! Sorry if the article was incorrect initially, but it was the information I was given at the time. I still think there are some cases where you can get one free.
f) The carte grise price depends on value and age of car and also CO2 levels and power.
So this is the best of my knowledge at this time. BON CHANCE!"
2. A visitor asks about the Certificate of Conformity (added 8/4/08)...
I wonder if you can help me at all. I have read your very informative article and am now dreading the procedure. However, we have heard (probably Chinese whispers!) that you no longer need a Certificate of Conformity for your car?? Also, that you can keep your UK plate, just having the spacing altered and an "F" on the plate instead of "GB". This would be a lot of help to us, as we have personal plates which we would like to keep.
According to French News (Nov. 07) you are able to keep your own number, but they then weren't sure in March 08!!
Thank you very much in advance for any help you are able to give.
Jo Rhodes, editor of French Property Links, replies...
Thanks for contacting us. I have been in contact with my colleague, Joanna, in France who is not aware of these changes, but is looking into things to see if she can find anything out.
In the meantime, what I understand is that the French system of number plates will be changing from 2009, for French plates, but I am not sure how this will affect personal/private English number plates, or even if you will be able to keep them, once you have registered your car in France. And as far as I'm aware, the Certificate of Conformity still exists.
The best thing to do at this stage is to probably contact your local DRIRE (Direction Régionale de l’Industrie, de la Recherche et de l’Environnement) office, or indeed your Mairie who might be able to confirm things. Failing that the DVLA in the UK might be able to point you in the right direction (http://www.dvla.gov.uk/).
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