Sixty Per Cent of a Working Year, and One Non-Renewable Year Afterwards to Find a Job
Answer
The general rule applies to you
No exception is recorded for citizens of Greece on this topic. That is the answer, not a gap - everything below is the rule you get, unchanged.
147 exceptions recorded across 54 countries · none match Greece to France · Residency as a student
The student card is the shortest test in the CESEDA. Article L. 422-1 gives the carte de séjour temporaire "étudiant" to a foreigner who establishes that they are following teaching or studying in France and who shows sufficient means of existence; it lasts up to a year, and it carries a right to work on the side, limited to 60 % of annual working time. Two things are waived in the same article: the long-stay visa requirement falls away where the person has been schooled in France without a break since the age of sixteen and is going on to higher education, and the means requirement falls away entirely for someone who has passed the entrance examination of an institution that has signed an agreement with the State. The multi-year version lasts as long as the study cycle, and a repeat year does not in itself call the seriousness of the studies into question. After graduation at master's level, article L. 422-10 gives one year on a card marked "recherche d'emploi ou création d'entreprise" - which article L. 433-1 names, with one other card, as not renewable. The fee is a third of the ordinary one: 100 euros on issue, 50 on renewal.
At a glance
- The card
- Carte de séjour temporaire "étudiant", one year or less
CESEDA article L. 422-1.
- Working while studying
- Permitted as a secondary activity, up to 60 % of annual working time
CESEDA article L. 422-1, third paragraph. The same 60 % applies to a mobility student under articles L. 422-4 and L. 422-5.
- Multi-year card
- As long as the study cycle you are enrolled in
CESEDA article L. 411-4 8°, subject to the studies being real and serious; one repeat per cycle does not by itself defeat that.
- Money test waived
- For a student admitted through the entrance examination of an institution that has signed an agreement with the State
CESEDA article L. 422-2, which also waives the long-stay visa in the same sentence.
- After a master's
- One year on a "recherche d'emploi ou création d'entreprise" card
CESEDA article L. 422-10, open to a master's-level graduate or a researcher who has finished their work, and conditioned on holding sickness insurance.
- Whether that year can be extended
- No - article L. 433-1 names it as not renewable
The only other card named there is the salarié détaché ICT card of article L. 421-26.
- What the job-search year leads to
- A salarié or travailleur temporaire card, or a talent card, without the labour market being raised against you
CESEDA article L. 422-11, on a job or a firm offer meeting the conditions of article L. 422-10 1°.
- Fee
- 100 euros on first issue and 50 euros on renewal
CESEDA article L. 436-1, which puts the student cards of articles L. 422-1 to L. 422-6 and L. 422-10 to L. 422-12 in the reduced band.
- Five-year long-term residence
- Years spent as a student do not count towards it
CESEDA article L. 426-18 5° and 6°, which disapply article L. 426-17 for the étudiant and étudiant-programme de mobilité cards.
Requirements
- Proof of following teaching or studying in France
- Sufficient means of existence, unless you entered through the concours of an institution that has an agreement with the State
- A long-stay visa, unless the administration grants the card under the second paragraph of article L. 422-1 or under article L. 412-3
- Sickness insurance, for the job-search card that follows graduation
In detail
A year that cannot be extended
Article L. 422-10 reads like a graduate route and article L. 433-1 decides what kind of one. Renewal of a temporary or multi-year card is normally a matter of continuing to meet the conditions; the opening words of article L. 433-1 take two cards out of that rule altogether, and the "recherche d'emploi ou création d'entreprise" card is one of them. So the year is the whole of it. What it leads to is article L. 422-11: a job or a firm offer related to the training, above a salary threshold set by decree, converts it into a salarié, travailleur temporaire or talent card with the labour-market test disapplied.
Country-level policy
The CESEDA does not claim to be the whole of French immigration law and says so in its first article. Article L. 110-1 states that the code governs entry, stay and removal subject to Union law and to international conventions. Article L. 411-1, which lists the residence documents a foreigner needs for a stay over three months, opens with the same reservation - subject to France's international engagements or to book II. Article L. 412-1, which makes a first card conditional on a long-stay visa, opens with it again. And article L. 436-6 extends the residence-permit taxes to titles provided for by treaties or agreements "sauf stipulations contraires prévues par ces traités ou accords". That is the mechanism by which a bilateral agreement can govern a nationality instead of the code: it is not an exception the administration grants, it is a reservation the code makes about itself, repeated at each of the points where the code would otherwise bite.
Article L. 412-1 of the CESEDA makes the first issue of a temporary or multi-year card conditional on producing the long-stay visa of article L. 411-1 - so the ordinary route into France is a consulate abroad, not a préfecture. The visa itself may not last more than a year, and article L. 312-2 lets it carry the rights of a temporary or multi-year card, which is what makes a single document serve as both entry title and residence permit for the first year. The exceptions are many and they are listed rather than reasoned: article L. 412-2 exempts twelve categories outright, including the private and family life cards, the cards issued on exceptional admission under articles L. 435-1 to L. 435-3, the European Blue Card issued on intra-Union mobility and the talent family card; article L. 412-3 lets the administration grant three more without the visa, including the student card. Several individual articles say the same thing in their own text - article L. 423-2 for a marriage celebrated in France, article L. 423-7 for the parent of a French child, article L. 425-9 for a seriously ill foreigner. And article L. 412-4 closes the loop: where a consulate has issued the long-stay visa matching a talent card, the préfet issues the corresponding card.
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.
The CESEDA prices residence in its own text rather than in a schedule. Article L. 436-1 charges 300 euros on the first issue of a residence title and 200 euros on renewal, reduced to 100 and 50 for a listed group that includes the student cards, the seasonal worker card, the family reunification cards and the work-accident card; a provisional residence authorisation costs 100 euros. Some titles are outside it entirely - the retraité card of articles L. 426-8 and L. 426-9, the refugee and subsidiary protection cards, and the card for a seriously ill foreigner under article L. 425-9. Two further charges fall on people whose papers slipped: article L. 436-4 charges a regularisation visa fee of 300 euros, of which 100 is taken non-refundably at the moment of applying, on someone who entered without the required documents or stayed past three months without a card; article L. 436-5 charges 180 euros for a renewal asked for late. A stamp duty of 50 euros sits on top under article L. 436-7. And the employer pays separately: article L. 436-10 charges 55 % of the worker's gross monthly salary, counted up to 2.5 times the gross monthly minimum wage, on a hire of twelve months or more.
What applies to you
Nothing changes for a citizen of Greece
We have no rule recorded that treats your citizenship differently here, so the general rule above is the one that applies to you. That is an answer, not a gap.
What the law says
«L'étranger qui établit qu'il suit un enseignement en France ou qu'il y fait des études et qui justifie disposer de moyens d'existence suffisants se voit délivrer une carte de séjour temporaire portant la mention " étudiant " d'une durée inférieure ou égale à un an.»The test itself: proof of study and sufficient means. Nothing about a level, a subject or an institution.
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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.
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«Cette carte donne droit à l'exercice, à titre accessoire, d'une activité professionnelle salariée dans la limite de 60 % de la durée de travail annuelle.»The right to work alongside the studies, capped as a share of a working year rather than as hours in a week.
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.
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«La carte de séjour prévue à l'article L. 422-1 est également délivrée lors de sa première admission au séjour, sans avoir à justifier de ses conditions d'existence et sans que soit exigée la condition prévue à l'article L. 412-1, à l'étranger ayant satisfait aux épreuves du concours d'entrée dans un établissement d'enseignement supérieur ayant signé une convention avec l'Etat.»The concours route, which removes both the means test and the long-stay visa in a single sentence.
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.
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«8° Aux étrangers mentionnés aux articles L. 422-1, L. 422-2 et L. 422-5 ; dans ce cas, sa durée est égale à celle restant à courir du cycle d'études dans lequel est inscrit l'étudiant, sous réserve du caractère réel et sérieux des études, apprécié au regard des éléments produits par les établissements de formation et par l'intéressé, un redoublement par cycle d'études ne remettant pas en cause, par lui-même, le caractère sérieux des études ;»How long a student's multi-year card runs, and the one sentence in the code that says a repeated year is not by itself evidence that the studies are not serious.
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 titulaire d'une assurance maladie qui justifie soit avoir été titulaire d'une carte de séjour temporaire ou pluriannuelle portant la mention " étudiant " délivrée sur le fondement des articles L. 422-1, L. 422-2 ou L. 422-6 et avoir obtenu dans un établissement d'enseignement supérieur habilité au plan national un diplôme au moins équivalent au grade de master ou figurant sur une liste fixée par décret, soit avoir été titulaire d'une carte de séjour pluriannuelle portant la mention " talent-chercheur " délivrée sur le fondement de l'article L. 421-14 et avoir achevé ses travaux de recherche, se voit délivrer une carte de séjour temporaire portant la mention " recherche d'emploi ou création d'entreprise " d'une durée d'un an dans les cas suivants :»The job-search and business-creation year. It is open after a master's-level degree or after finishing research work, and sickness insurance is a condition of it.
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
«A l'exception de la carte de séjour pluriannuelle portant la mention " salarié détaché ICT ", prévue à l'article L. 421-26, et de la carte de séjour pluriannuelle portant la mention " recherche d'emploi ou création d'entreprise ", prévue à l'article L. 422-10, qui ne sont pas renouvelables, le renouvellement de la carte de séjour temporaire ou pluriannuelle est subordonné à la preuve par le ressortissant étranger qu'il continue de remplir les conditions requises pour la délivrance de cette carte.»The sentence that makes the job-search year a hard stop. Two cards in the whole code are not renewable and this is one of them.
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
«A l'issue de cette période d'un an, l'intéressé pourvu d'un emploi ou d'une promesse d'embauche satisfaisant aux conditions énoncées au 1° de l'article L. 422-10 se voit délivrer la carte de séjour temporaire portant la mention " salarié " ou " travailleur temporaire " prévue aux articles L. 421-1 ou L. 421-3, ou la carte de séjour pluriannuelle portant la mention " passeport talent ", " passeport talent-carte bleue européenne " ou " passeport talent-chercheur " prévue aux articles L. 421-9, L. 421-11, L. 421-13-1, L. 421-14 ou L. 421-20, sans que lui soit opposable la situation de l'emploi.»What the year is for. A job or a firm offer meeting the conditions converts it into a work card without the labour-market test.
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
«5° De la carte de séjour temporaire portant la mention " étudiant " prévue à l'article L. 422-1 ou L. 422-2 ; 6° De la carte de séjour temporaire portant la mention " étudiant-programme de mobilité " prévue à l'article L. 422-5 ;»Student years do not build towards the ten-year long-term residence card: articles L. 422-1, L. 422-2 and L. 422-5 are on the exclusion list.
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 salary threshold for converting the job-search year into a work card is set by decree and modulated by level of degree. The decree was not read and no figure is published here.
Tuition, enrolment and the means figure a consulate asks for are not in the CESEDA. What article L. 422-1 requires is "des moyens d'existence suffisants" and it names no amount.
- 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