Moving to France With Your Car

If you decide to keep your UK vehicle when you move permanently to France, you must tell DVLA you are exporting it, and re-register it in the French system.

Re-registering your UK in France
Essentially, this is a matter of assembling the required paperwork and paying the appropriate registration fee: for full details (in French), click here. On most cars the headlamps must be changed because headlights dipping to the right are not acceptable in France

Carte grise
The registration document, or certificat d’immatriculation, is commonly referred to as the carte grise – ‘grey card’. You must keep this in the car with you. If you take your car to a garage, they will ask for it.

Contrôle technique (MOT)
A contrôle technique certificate (CT) is needed for cars more than 4 years old, and remains valid for 2 years. The test is carried out at a CT testing station, not a garage; CT stations do not carry out repairs. Your sticker, showing the CT expiry date, must be displayed on your windscreen.

Insurance
French car insurance covers the car, not the driver as in the UK, and normally includes breakdown cover; consequently, France has no RAC/AA equivalent. Continuous insurance is a legal requirement, even for cars kept off the road; before cancelling your policy, your insurers will require evidence that the car has been sold or scrapped, or that you have arranged insurance elsewhere. A valid insurance sticker must be displayed on the windscreen.

Road tax
There is no road tax in France.

Traffic offences
Unlike the UK, where you accumulate points for traffic offences, in France you lose points for infractions. When you have lost your 12 points, a ban will be triggered. France has severe penalties for offences such as drink-driving and extreme speeding.

Changing your licence
You may drive in France on a valid UK licence, but if you incur penalty points, you will be obliged to change it for a French licence so that a tally can be kept of your points. You must have your licence with you whenever you drive.

Caravans, trailers and motorhomes
To be towed by a French-registered vehicle, caravans and trailers over 500kg must be registered in their own right and display their own number plates; they cannot share the towing vehicle’s number. A motorhome being re-registered in France must pass a habitation check to ensure that gas installations etc. comply with French normes.

The code de la route contains numerous rules that have no equivalent in the Highway Code ... Do you understand priorité à droite? and did you know that when overtaking a cyclist in France you must leave a minimum gap of 1.5m between your car and the cyclist’s left shoulder?