France in Focus

I have had to help my neighbour this week with a French admin project.
She needs a passport. She has no computer and her phone line is terrible.
To apply, you need a specific CERFA form if you can’t use ANTS to do the pre registration which you CANNOT download and print.
I have an ANTS Id but I am unable to do this pre reg for another person.
The local mairie doesn’t do passports so we have to go 10k to another one. They request the pre reg is done by France Services.
We got a RDV yesterday and turned up to find a lovely office nice and warm. Two assistants.
So I had assumed that the processing would be done on line but nope.
The CERFA form was a double a4 thing which the person filled in (shockingly bad handwriting). Gave it back to us and sent us off to the mairie to make an appointment to hand over the paperwork for processing.
We have the timbre fiscal but still have to get a decent photo.
Proof of domicile is also an issue. Some Mairie’s accept tax returns, some don’t. If your supplier of services has dematerialised your bills without you realising(as in the case of my neighbour) with no internet and no way of printing them off life gets complicated - we managed to get that changed after a long phone call to veolia.
My neighbour also has the habit of burning paper bills but I’ve persuaded her that isn’t a good idea now.
I also read her livret de famille. It only shows my neighbour as the wife of the head of the family. She has no birth certificate but apparently this is not an issue as she was born locally goodness knows what happened to her fathers livret de famille. The marriage and death of her husband are recorded as well as the births of her 3 children. I wonder what happens to that book when she passes away?
I have no idea how long it will take to process the paperwork but I’m assuming about 6 weeks.
An interesting day.

Modern French bureaucracy at its best.

I am currently having my own struggles. The computer says NO!

Modern French bureaucracy can't make up its mind whether its digital, half-digital or not digital. That's one of the reasons why I never bothered gettiunbg a French passport. I have a carte d'identité and an Irish passport which will do me fine.

As I hinted above, I have had my own struggles with the bureaucratic system.

A visit to the pharmacy 3 weeks ago resulted in my CV not working. Updates had no effect and the assistant went to the pharmacist for help. She returned a few minutes later with a paper showing that I now had no rights to support from CPAM - and incidentally she had not been paid for my last transaction. She also said that another foreign client had had the same. No warning given, no request for some information, just a simple cancellation of all rights. Her suggestion was to go onto ameli to sort things out.

We have had cards that no longer worked before and it is a simple process on ameli.fr to request a new card. So onto ameli but the system refused to recognise my details - which in hindsight seems logical if I now had no rights. So no access to the system.

So the next working day resulted in a call to CPAM to find out what was happening. True to form the fonc there was taking no prisoners with her explanation, delivered at breakneck speed. From what I could gather there had been an update for all frontaliers* and things would be back to normal in a couple of days. I explained that I was not and never had been a frontalier. No worry just wait a couple of days.

* The region borders Switzerland and so probably has quite a number of frontaliers but I would be surprised if there were any active ones in our departement.

A week later a visit to the pharmacy showed the card was still not working.

And another weeks visit resulted in the same issue. This assistant seemed more clued up (or maybe they had all been alerted to the problem in the intervening week) and went to interrogate an alternative system - the one the pharmacist had access to originally show the cancellation of my rights. This time my rights had been restored but clearly the card was still not working.

So back onto ameli.fr to request a new card - and guess what, I am still not recognised and cannot get into the system.

So I have been gathering me ducks together and putting them in a row to send to CPAM. Then in the snail mail I received an invitation to apply for a CV. I could do it online (oh no I can't), or I could fill in the accompanying form and send it off with proof of identity and a passport style photo.

So looks like it is now all sorted. What could go wrong?

Knowing my luck they will see the foreign proof of identity and ask for an S1 - which of course they had many years ago and which I do not have a copy of.

Through all of this OH's card has worked without issue. I wonder if the fact that I had 2 years cover from the German health system is what has triggered this. Not that I could legally be a German frontalier living where we do.

@exile What a nightmare! I hope it gets sorted soon.