The Immigration Code Mentions a Driving Licence Once, and Only to Take One Away
Whether a foreign driving licence may be used in France, for how long, and on what terms it can be exchanged, is not decided by either code read for this country. The consolidated CESEDA last modified on 27 August 2026 was searched in full for the words permis de conduire. They occur in two articles and neither is about driving on a foreign licence: article L. 823-4 lists suspension of the driving licence for up to five years, doubled on a second offence, among the additional penalties for the offences of helping irregular entry and stay, and article R. 142-16 is about who may receive personal data from the residence-permit file. The Code civil does not mention a driving licence at all. The instrument that decides the question is published by Legifrance, which answers 403 to every request this project can make - so this record says where we looked and what was there, and nothing about the rule.
At a glance
- Whether the immigration code decides this
- No - the two occurrences of permis de conduire in the CESEDA are a criminal penalty and a data-sharing list
Articles L. 823-4 2° and R. 142-16 of the consolidated text last modified 27 August 2026, searched in full.
- Whether the Code civil decides it
- No - the words do not occur in the consolidated text last modified 29 July 2026
That text was searched in full for permis de conduire.
- The one substantive mention
- Suspension of the licence for up to five years, doubled on a repeat offence, as an additional penalty for helping irregular entry or stay
CESEDA article L. 823-4 2°.
- Exchanging a foreign licence
- Not answerable from anything read here
Neither of the two codes read for France contains a rule on it.
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
«2° La suspension, pour une durée de cinq ans au plus, du permis de conduire ; cette durée peut être doublée en cas de récidive ;»The only place in the CESEDA where a driving licence is the subject of a rule. It is a penalty on someone who helped a foreigner enter or stay irregularly, not a rule about foreigners driving.
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
Nothing here is recorded as an absence in French law. France plainly has rules on foreign driving licences; what is recorded is that they are not in the two codes we hold, and which words were searched for.
This is a gap a person with a browser can close in a few minutes, in the same way the two codes quoted here were obtained.
- 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