Where your driving licence is recognised if your passport is from France
One question, every country, with your nationality already applied. In 4 of them something is written that changes the answer for you; in the other 45 the general rule is what you get, and that is the answer rather than a gap. Every line is that country’s own record.
Where it changes for you
4
Where it does not
45
Blocs you are in
2
Where your nationality changes the answer
DenmarkVerified with official sourceMonitor - can change2026-10-10
Your Licence Does Not Expire Here, and It Exchanges Without a Test or a Medical Certificate
reaches you through Nationals of the Union and the wider Economic Area
The general rule it sits on
Once you have your normal residence in Denmark you need a Danish licence. A licence from another Union or EEA state keeps working for its own validity period and exchanges without anything further. A licence from anywhere else keeps working for 180 days from the day you become normally resident, and after that it exchanges only if you pass a check test - unless it was issued in one of the countries that exchange without one. That list is the thing worth reading carefully. It is not in the licence regulation and it is not in the regulation that governs exchange without a test: that regulation, from 2016, says the traffic authority decides country by country on application and publishes an updated list on its own website. The only named list anywhere in the statute book is in the 2014 regulation the 2016 one repealed, carried forward by a transitional sentence saying those countries are taken to qualify without applying again.
FinlandVerified with official sourceMonitor - can change2026-10-10
Your Licence Does Not Expire Here, and There Is No Clock on Exchanging It
reaches you through Nationals of the Union and the wider Economic Area
The general rule it sits on
The Driving Licences Act sorts foreign licences into three boxes and gives each a different clock. An EU or EEA licence entitles you to drive here for as long as it is valid, with no Finnish deadline at all, and may be exchanged under the ordinary licence rules. A licence from a state party to the Geneva 1949 or Vienna 1968 road traffic conventions is accepted for two years from the holder's entry in the population register, and inside those two years it may be exchanged for a Finnish category B or motorcycle licence without a new driving test. Any other licence from a state Finland recognises, in categories A1, A2, A or B, is accepted for one year from entry into the country or from registration, and section 61 provides no exchange without a test except for diplomatic staff. Two further conditions catch people out. A convention licence issued while the holder was already normally resident in Finland is not merely useless for driving - section 60(4) says it is not valid in Finland at all. And sections 60 and 61 both exclude Åland by name, so what a foreign licence is worth there is a question for Åland's own law.
IrelandVerified with official sourceMonitor - can change2026-10-10
A Member State Licence Exchanges, and the Order Says So in Its First Line
reaches you through Nationals of the Union and the wider Economic Area
The general rule it sits on
Ireland does not recognise foreign driving licences in general. Section 23A of the Road Traffic Act 1961 lets the Minister declare by order that licences issued by a particular state are recognised for the purpose of exchange, and a licence that is not covered by such an order cannot be exchanged at all - the holder sits the Irish theory test and the Irish driving test like a new driver. The general order is the Road Traffic (Recognition of Foreign Driving Licences) Order 2007, which covers every Member State and twelve named others: Australia, Gibraltar, Guernsey, Iceland, the Isle of Man, Japan, Jersey, Liechtenstein, Norway, South Africa, South Korea and Switzerland. Later orders add states one at a time, and Canada arrives not as a country but as a stack of provinces.
SwedenVerified with official sourceActively changing right nowlast checked 2026-10-10
Your Licence Does Not Expire Here, and It Can Be Exchanged Once You Settle
reaches you through Nationals of the Union and the wider Economic Area
The general rule it sits on
Sweden sorts foreign driving licences into exactly two classes and treats them completely differently. An EEA licence is valid here according to its content and can be exchanged for a Swedish one once you are permanently resident. Any other licence is a tredjelandskörkort - the Act defines it as a licence issued in a state outside the EEA - and since 1 May 2026 chapter 6, section 2 of the Driving Licence Act says such a licence ceases to be valid in Sweden once the holder has been registered in the population register for more than a year. Exchange is open to only four non-EEA issuers, named in chapter 6, section 7: the Faroe Islands, the United Kingdom, Japan and Switzerland. A licence from anywhere else cannot be exchanged at all, which means that after one year on the register the holder has to take a Swedish licence from the beginning. For the thirty-five countries of the Americas this site covers, that is the answer. While a foreign licence is still valid, a licence that is neither in the form of the Geneva or Vienna convention models nor written in English, German or French works only with a certified translation or an international driving permit, and a licence without a photograph works only with photographic identification.
Where the general rule applies to you unchanged
Nothing is recorded in these that treats a citizen of France differently on this question, so what follows is what everyone gets.
A Foreign Licence Lasts 185 Days, and Whether It Can Be Exchanged Is a List of Thirteen Entries
How long a non-EU licence keeps you legal here:
185 days from the day you settled in the Netherlands
Exchange without a Dutch examination:
Only for licences designated by ministerial regulation
Who is on the designated list:
Alberta, Andorra, Chinese Taipei, Gibraltar and the United Kingdom, Guernsey, Israel, Japan, Jersey, the Isle of Man, Monaco, Quebec, South Korea and Singapore
DenmarkVerified with official sourceMonitor - can change2026-10-10
Finland
Ireland
Sweden
Antigua and Barbuda
Argentina
Austria
Barbados
Belgium
Belize
Bolivia
Brazil
Canada
Chile
Colombia
Costa Rica
Cuba
Dominica
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
El Salvador
Germany
Greece
Grenada
Guatemala
Guyana
Honduras
Italy
Jamaica
Luxembourg
Mexico
Nicaragua
Panama
Paraguay
Peru
Poland
Portugal
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Spain
Suriname
The Bahamas
Trinidad and Tobago
United States
Uruguay
Venezuela