Country-wide policy
Four Rungs, and the Last One Is Handed to You at Sixty Without Asking
French residence documents form a ladder and the code states each rung's length in one article. Under article L. 411-3 a long-stay visa and a carte de séjour temporaire each last at most a year, a carte de séjour pluriannuelle at most four, and a carte de résident ten. Article L. 433-4 is the step from the first to the second: a year of lawful stay, attendance at the integration training, a pass mark and a level of French produce a multi-year card bearing the same wording. The ten-year rung is reached either through a family or personal route - articles L. 423-6, L. 423-10 to L. 423-12, L. 423-16, L. 426-1 to L. 426-3 and L. 426-10 among them - or through time, under article L. 426-17, which gives the résident de longue durée-UE card after five years of lawful uninterrupted residence on resources at least equal to the minimum wage and with sickness insurance. Above all of them sits article L. 426-4: a carte de résident permanent of indefinite duration, granted on request at the expiry of a carte de résident and granted as of right at the second renewal of one - and issued to a holder over sixty even if they do not ask for it. The ladder also has a trapdoor: article L. 411-5 expires a carte de résident after three consecutive years abroad.
Topics it changes
- Residency through work
- Residency on passive income
- Residency through marriage
- Residency through ancestry
- Residency as a retiree
- Residency through investment
- Residency as a student
- Becoming a citizen
At a glance
- Temporary card
- At most one year
CESEDA article L. 411-3.
- Multi-year card
- At most four years
CESEDA article L. 411-3; article L. 411-4 lists eleven cases where the duration is set differently.
- Carte de résident
- Ten years
CESEDA article L. 411-3.
- Carte de résident permanent
- Indefinite
CESEDA article L. 426-4.
- From one year to four
- A year of lawful stay plus the integration conditions
CESEDA article L. 433-4.
- From time alone to ten years
- Five years of lawful uninterrupted residence, resources at least equal to the minimum wage, and sickness insurance
CESEDA article L. 426-17; article L. 426-18 excludes student, trainee and several talent cards from counting.
- When the permanent card becomes an entitlement
- At the second renewal of a carte de résident
CESEDA article L. 426-4, second paragraph, subject to public order and to the integration condition.
- Over sixty
- A carte de résident holder seeking renewal is issued the permanent card even without asking for it
CESEDA article L. 426-4, third paragraph, unless they ask for the résident de longue durée-UE card instead.
- Losing a ten-year card by absence
- Three consecutive years outside France
CESEDA article L. 411-5, which sets six years for a résident de longue durée-UE card holder outside France but inside the Union.
What the law says
«Les visas de long séjour mentionnés aux 1° et 2° de l'article L. 411-1 ont une durée de validité maximale d'un an. Une carte de séjour temporaire a une durée de validité maximale d'un an. Une carte de séjour pluriannuelle a une durée de validité maximale de quatre ans. Une carte de résident est valable dix ans.»The four durations in four sentences. Everything else in the residence regime hangs off these.
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
«Sous réserve des engagements internationaux de la France ou du livre II, tout étranger âgé de plus de dix- huit ans qui souhaite séjourner en France pour une durée supérieure à trois mois doit être titulaire de l'un des documents de séjour suivants :»The closed list of documents that authorise a stay over three months. A foreigner outside it, and outside an international agreement, has no lawful basis to remain.
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
«L'étranger qui justifie d'une résidence régulière ininterrompue d'au moins cinq ans en France au titre d'une carte de séjour temporaire ou pluriannuelle ou d'une carte de résident, de ressources stables, régulières et suffisantes pour subvenir à ses besoins et d'une assurance maladie se voit délivrer, sous réserve des exceptions prévues à l'article L. 426-18, une carte de résident portant la mention " résident de longue durée- UE " d'une durée de dix ans.»The route to ten years that depends on time rather than on family: five years, resources and insurance.
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
«La délivrance de la carte de résident permanent est de droit dès le deuxième renouvellement d'une carte de résident, sous réserve des mêmes conditions que celles prévues au premier alinéa.»The second renewal turns the permanent card from a possibility into an entitlement.
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
«L'étranger âgé de plus de soixante ans titulaire d'une carte de résident dont il sollicite le renouvellement, et qui remplit les conditions définies au premier alinéa, se voit délivrer la carte de résident permanent même s'il n'en fait pas la demande, sauf s'il demande la délivrance ou le renouvellement de la carte de résident portant la mention " résident de longue durée-UE " prévue à l'article L. 426-17.»And over sixty it arrives unasked, with one way of declining it: asking for the long-term residence card instead.
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
«La carte de résident d'un étranger qui a quitté le territoire français et a résidé à l'étranger pendant une période de plus de trois ans consécutifs est périmée, de même que la carte de résident portant la mention " résident»The trapdoor. Three consecutive years abroad expire a ten-year card, which is why the retraité card of article L. 426-8 exists at all. The quotation stops mid-phrase because the article crosses a page in the published text; the sentence goes on to apply the same rule to the long-term residence card, counted against absence from the Union rather than from France.
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
The ladder is not the only way up. Several routes start at the ten-year rung without passing through the others - the spouse of a French national after three years, the dependent parent or adult child of a French national, a person meeting the birth-in-France nationality conditions of article 21-7 of the Code civil.
Article L. 426-18 is worth reading before counting five years. Student, trainee and several of the posted-worker and talent cards are excluded from the residence that builds towards the long-term residence card.