The Union Guarantees the Account; the Immigration Code Names the French Article That Does It, and We Could Not Open That One
The right to a basic bank account in France comes from Directive 2014/92/EU, which every member state has had to transpose. Article 16(2) requires member states to ensure that consumers legally resident in the Union - including consumers with no fixed address, asylum seekers, and people who hold no residence permit but whose expulsion is impossible for legal or factual reasons - have the right to open and use a payment account with basic features, and says the right applies irrespective of where the consumer lives. Article 16(3) gives the bank ten business days from a complete application, and article 16(4) requires refusal where opening the account would breach the money-laundering rules. The French transposition is in the code monétaire et financier, and the CESEDA names the article: in article R. 551-10 it provides that an asylum seeker's declaration of domiciliation also serves as proof of address for opening a bank account under article L. 312-1 of that code. That is a real and useful fact about French practice. What is behind the reference is not here: the code monétaire et financier is published by Legifrance, which answers 403 to every request this project can make.
At a glance
- Where the right comes from
- Article 16 of Directive 2014/92/EU, transposed by each member state
A directive binds the state to a result; the right a consumer exercises is the national text.
- Who holds the right
- Consumers legally resident in the Union, including people with no fixed address, asylum seekers, and people who cannot be expelled for legal or factual reasons
Article 16(2) of Directive 2014/92/EU.
- Whether where you live matters
- No - the right applies irrespective of the consumer's place of residence
Article 16(2), last sentence of the first subparagraph.
- How long the bank has
- Ten business days from a complete application
Article 16(3), which requires the account to be opened or the application refused inside that period.
- When a bank must refuse
- Where opening the account would breach the money-laundering and terrorist-financing rules
Article 16(4) of the Directive.
- A genuine-interest test
- Member states may require it
Article 16(2), second subparagraph, which also requires that exercising the right not be made too difficult or burdensome.
- Proof of address for an asylum seeker
- The declaration of domiciliation also serves as proof of address for opening an account
CESEDA article R. 551-10, which names article L. 312-1 of the code monétaire et financier as the provision it is proving address for.
- Which French article carries the right
- Article L. 312-1 of the code monétaire et financier, named by the CESEDA
Its text was not read: Legifrance answers 403 to every request this project can make for that code.
Requirements
- Legal residence in the Union, in the extended sense article 16(2) of the Directive gives it
- Identification satisfying the money-laundering rules, which the Directive makes a mandatory ground of refusal if it cannot be met
- Proof of address, for which an asylum seeker may use the declaration of domiciliation
Exceptions by origin
No exceptions recorded
Nothing we have read treats any nationality differently for this topic. The rule above applies to everyone.
What the law says
«Member States shall ensure that consumers legally resident in the Union, including consumers with no fixed address and asylum seekers, and consumers who are not granted a residence permit but whose expulsion is impossible for legal or factual reasons, have the right to open and use a payment account with basic features with credit institutions located in their territory. Such a right shall apply irrespective of the consumer’s place of residence.»The right, and three categories of person written into it who would otherwise be the first to be turned away.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Union's legal database. Publishes each act as adopted in the Official Journal and, separately, a consolidated version carrying every amendment to a stated date, identified as 0YYYYRNNNN-YYYYMMDD. The consolidated text marks each amended passage with the instrument that changed it.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: A consolidated text is explicitly not authentic - EUR-Lex says so on the document - and only the Official Journal version has legal force. It also says nothing about how any member state applies the act: a regulation is directly applicable but the border practice, the evidence an officer may ask for and the national exceptions are in national law, which is published elsewhere.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«Member States shall ensure that credit institutions offering payment accounts with basic features open the payment account with basic features or refuse a consumer’s application for a payment account with basic features, in each case without undue delay and at the latest 10 business days after receiving a complete application.»A deadline that runs whichever way the answer goes.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Union's legal database. Publishes each act as adopted in the Official Journal and, separately, a consolidated version carrying every amendment to a stated date, identified as 0YYYYRNNNN-YYYYMMDD. The consolidated text marks each amended passage with the instrument that changed it.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: A consolidated text is explicitly not authentic - EUR-Lex says so on the document - and only the Official Journal version has legal force. It also says nothing about how any member state applies the act: a regulation is directly applicable but the border practice, the evidence an officer may ask for and the national exceptions are in national law, which is published elsewhere.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«Member States shall ensure that credit institutions refuse an application for a payment account with basic features where opening such an account would result in an infringement of the provisions on the prevention of money laundering and the countering of terrorist financing laid down in Directive 2005/60/EC.»The one refusal that is mandatory rather than permitted.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Union's legal database. Publishes each act as adopted in the Official Journal and, separately, a consolidated version carrying every amendment to a stated date, identified as 0YYYYRNNNN-YYYYMMDD. The consolidated text marks each amended passage with the instrument that changed it.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: A consolidated text is explicitly not authentic - EUR-Lex says so on the document - and only the Official Journal version has legal force. It also says nothing about how any member state applies the act: a regulation is directly applicable but the border practice, the evidence an officer may ask for and the national exceptions are in national law, which is published elsewhere.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«La déclaration de domiciliation vaut également justificatif de domicile pour l'ouverture d'un compte bancaire en application de l'article L. 312-1 du code monétaire et financier.»Our translation - not official
The declaration of domiciliation also serves as proof of address for the opening of a bank account in application of article L. 312-1 of the code monétaire et financier.
The immigration code reaching into the banking code. It settles the proof-of-address problem for an asylum seeker and, in doing so, names the French article that carries the right to an account.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The official consolidated text of French codes and statutes. Each code has a stable address built from a LEGITEXT identifier, and the page offers the whole code as a PDF under 'Telecharger le code', which is the only form that carries the text of the articles.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: The domain is behind a bot challenge and answers 403 to every request this project makes, including to the PDF endpoint its own page links to - so every reading here was downloaded by a person in a browser and stored as `manual-read`, and cannot be refreshed by running a command. A browser is not reliable either: one page saved by hand came back as the challenge itself, 5,883 bytes titled 'Just a moment...'. The code page at /codes/texte_lc/ carries only the plan, article numbers in a list with no text, so a reader following a citation to it will not find the quoted words there and has to take the PDF. The PDF states its own two dates on the last line, the last modification and the day it was generated, and the cut-off recorded against a quotation is the first of those. What is not here at all is practice: French immigration decisions rest heavily on circulaires and on prefectural discretion, and neither is published in the code.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
Practical notes
A directive is addressed to the member state. Quoting article 16 says what France had to achieve, not what a French bank owes a particular customer - that is in the national text, which is named here and was not read.
Four other countries on this site quote their own transposition of this Directive, and one of them, the Netherlands, quotes a national Act that rules nationality out in the very sentence that creates the right. France's equivalent sentence has not been read, so nothing is said here about whether it does the same.
- consolidatesDirective 2014/92/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 July 2014
EUR-Lex, Publications Office of the European Union
About this source
The Union's legal database. Publishes each act as adopted in the Official Journal and, separately, a consolidated version carrying every amendment to a stated date, identified as 0YYYYRNNNN-YYYYMMDD. The consolidated text marks each amended passage with the instrument that changed it.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: A consolidated text is explicitly not authentic - EUR-Lex says so on the document - and only the Official Journal version has legal force. It also says nothing about how any member state applies the act: a regulation is directly applicable but the border practice, the evidence an officer may ask for and the national exceptions are in national law, which is published elsewhere.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
- consolidatesCode de l'entrée et du séjour des étrangers et du droit d'asile, consolidated text last modified 27 August 2026
Legifrance, Direction de l'information legale et administrative · consolidated to 2026-08-27
Known to be out of date. The address cited is the code's plan: it lists article numbers without their text, so a reader following it will not find the quoted words on that page and has to take the whole-code PDF offered under "Telecharger le code". Legifrance answers 403 to every request this project can make, including to that PDF, so the reading behind these quotations was downloaded by a person in a browser and cannot be refreshed by running a command. The PDF prints its own two dates on its last line - last modified and generated - and the cut-off recorded here is the first of them.
About this source
The official consolidated text of French codes and statutes. Each code has a stable address built from a LEGITEXT identifier, and the page offers the whole code as a PDF under 'Telecharger le code', which is the only form that carries the text of the articles.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: The domain is behind a bot challenge and answers 403 to every request this project makes, including to the PDF endpoint its own page links to - so every reading here was downloaded by a person in a browser and stored as `manual-read`, and cannot be refreshed by running a command. A browser is not reliable either: one page saved by hand came back as the challenge itself, 5,883 bytes titled 'Just a moment...'. The code page at /codes/texte_lc/ carries only the plan, article numbers in a list with no text, so a reader following a citation to it will not find the quoted words there and has to take the PDF. The PDF states its own two dates on the last line, the last modification and the day it was generated, and the cut-off recorded against a quotation is the first of those. What is not here at all is practice: French immigration decisions rest heavily on circulaires and on prefectural discretion, and neither is published in the code.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source