Safety vest & warning triangle mandatory from July 2008
From the 1 July 2008, all French registered cars must be equipped with a fluorescent safety vest and a warning triangle. Not having them could result in a fine of 99 euros for each missing item. You will find them in car shops and supermarkets. You are supposed to keep the safety vest within reach of the driver's seat so that you can put it on before getting out of the car in an emergency.
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Before registering or re-registering a car in France, it must be submitted to a roadworthiness test (contrôle technique) if it is more than 4 years old. You may choose any authorised control station. It costs around 60 €. They will provide a report of their findings and place a sticker in the windscreen when the car has passed. This report will include work that they recommend you complete, but is not necessarily dangerous. There is no mutual recognition of roadworthiness tests in the EU yet. For example, if you have a 5 year old car that you had inspected in the UK last month and you move it to France, it must be tested in France before you can register it. The car must then be re-tested every two years. Every year for a commercial vehicle, even if it is being used for non commercial use, and includes motor caravans. To pass the contrôle technique, cars coming from the UK must show speed in kilometres and the headlights changed for driving on the right.
If you import a new car to France, you must pay the French standard VAT rate. If you import a second hand car from the EU/EEA, you must go to your local French tax office and present documentation to prove that VAT has been paid in another EU/EEA country. If the car is above a certain age, no VAT is due if you don't resell the car the first year after importing it.
You will also need a certificate of conformity obtainable from the French importer or manufacturer against a fee that is typically between 80 € and 130 €. Normally the local main dealer will assist you in getting this certificate. Even French built cars that have previously been registered in the UK will have to go through the same procedure, i.e. Citroen, Renault. If you cannot get a certificate of conformity because it is a vehicle that was never imported into France, you may be able to get a partial certificate that certifies that it is similar to a model that has been type approved in France, but the car will then normally need an individual approval by the DRIRE. This is normally carried out at a DRIRE testing centre within the Department where you live. They may demand that the car be modified before an approval can be issued. The complexity and cost of this may indeed make it undesirable to import the car to France. There is no guarantee that they will approve the car at all. There is an exception for collectors' cars, which can get a limited registration document even if they don't fulfill today's standards.
You register the car at any prefecture or sous-prefecture in your department. You need personal identification, a document certifying your address in France, e.g. a utility bill, the previous car registration document, a form you must fill in to request registration, the pass certificate from the contrôle technique, and or DRIRE, the VAT certificate from the local French tax office or the customs document. You must re-register the car if you move to another address is France. When insure the car, be sure to provide the insurance company with documentation of your current bonus history, even from abroad. Without any insurance history, it will be much more difficult to find an insurer. Most French insurance companies accept foreign no claims bonus.
New French number plates
The present numbering system for French number plates dates back to 1950 and has nearly reached saturation point. The computer system which currently manages number plate registration is technically ancient!
Although over 150 million vehicles are currently registered, only around 40 million are actually in use, due to owners failing to declare the scrapping of their vehicles.
From 1st January 2009, number plates in France will follow a new system (The SIV system - "Système d'Immatriculation des Véhicules") for new vehicles. From the 1st March 2009, this will also apply to second-hand vehicles when home moves, and other circumstances require changes to the registration documents (carte grise).
The new plates will be made up of two letters, three numbers, mand two more letters, eg “AB-123-CD” The characters will be black on a white background with an "F" for France under the EU logo, on a blue strip to the left of the plate and a blue strip to the right with the owner’s département number of choice, below the regional logo of the chosen département. The vehicle will keep the same registration number throughout its life. You may choose to change or keep the departmental number and logo.
Owners will be able to register their vehicles anywhere in France, regardless of domicile, via authorized garages, dealers or prefectures. This removes the previous necessity of changing the vehicle registration number when moving to another department. A provisional “registration certificate” with the new registration number will be issued on payment of the relevant tax and valid for a month, allowing the driver to drive immediately. The carte grise will be sent by registered post to the owner’s home address within a week.
Any licence issued by an EU/EEA country is recognised within France. There is no need to change a UK licence to a French one, even if you become permanently resident in France. The licence is valid until the expiry date printed on it. You may consider that it is beneficial to exchange it to a French licence, as currently, unlike the UK, there is no expiry age for a French licence.
In case the police have to add points to your licence after a serious traffic offence, you will be obliged to change your licence to a French one.
Many police officers and prefectures still do not understand the principle of mutual recognition of Driving licences within the EU and keep asking drivers to exchange licences even though these licences are perfectly valid. French civil servants often do not keep up to date, with regulations. When they don't know something, they just fill in the gaps themselves by guessing.
Electric plugs are not standardised in the EU. Plug adapters are available in DIY stores in France and specialist stores abroad, Travellers would be best advised to buy an adapter in their own country to avoid the trouble of searching once in France.
230 volts AC 50 Hz (cycles) is the standard in the EU. Electric equipment rated between 210 volts and 250 volts will work. A bigger problem than the plugs is that 110 volt equipment, currently used in the USA cannot be used without a transformer. Some equipment may be rated for use with either 110 or 240 volts, this is especially true of chargers for photographic equipment. Both bayonet and screw bulbs are sold in France.
Standards for terrestrial analogue TV and VHS differ from country to country.
TV channels by digital satellite, are quickly making these old standards irrelevant.
DVDs sold in France will usually have the option for English soundtrack and subtitles.
All equipment sold in France is multi standard and capable of receiving broadcasts in PAL and Secam.
Films broadcast on the French channels are systematically dubbed in French, leaving little pleasure for English speakers. TF1 occasionally transmits both the original soundtrack and the dubbed sound on satellite.
The only French satellite package is Canal Satellite, this may be of little interest to foreigners, because nearly all the channels are French. France, is now moving ahead with terrestrial digital TV and radio channels in clear on the Atlantic Bird 3 satellite at 5.0 degrees west. See Lyngsat for technical details.
BBC 1-4, BBC News 24, CBBC, ITV 1-4 (and ITV2+1 and ITV3+1), Sky News, Channel 4 and 5, CNN, Euronews. Most English channels are broadcast in clear from the Astra 2D satellite at 28.2 degrees east, which can easily be received throughout France with a 80cm satellite dish. All these channels can be received with any SKY digital satellite receiver and a special SKY card for which there is a one off charge of £20. A new development is the Freesat system operated jointly by the BBC and ITV. A freesat box is required for a one off payment of between £120 and £300, depending on model. This will give all the English terrestrial channels plus a few extras. It also allows reception of the existing HD television channels.
French keyboards use AZERTY layout, whereas most other keyboards use the QWERTY layout. This means that many letters and symbols - are placed in different places. However, the French keyboard obviously allows direct typing of French accented letters, whereas for example a UK keyboard makes that impossible without entering the 3- or 4-digit code for the letter. Using Windows, you can plug in a different keyboard and quite easily change the operating system to be able to use either keyboard.
English language software is rare in France. Fortunately, Internet shopping has made it easy to order the language version you want from other countries. Ordering from Amazon UK or simply downloading from the manufacturer is easy.
French electricity supply suffers frequent power drops, especially in rural areas, or where your house is at the end of the line. Many of these power drops last only a few seconds, but that is enough to shut down a computer.
A battery backup power supply, called onduleur in France, is a good idea to prevent data loss. It will assure that a power drop lasting only a few minutes will have no impact on your computer, and it will give you time to shut down your computer correctly if the power drop lasts longer.
You can get ADSL high-speed Internet connections at several megabits, unlimited phone calls to landlines in France and 40 countries and a pack of TV channels for about 30 € a month. There is a high availability of ADSL throughout France, although some rural areas are still not covered. In cities, cable operators also provide a similar service, and if you are lucky enough to live in the Herault Department a soon to be launched Fibre optic service will be launched throughout the department. Bi-directional satellite access is available in case you cannot find any other reasonable access, but at an increased cost.
A few local communities are installing wi-fi for local cover. It is a stated government policy that the entire population should have access to high-speed Internet in one form or another, and work is in progress to assure that it will happen.
If your geographical area is dégroupé, then you don't need France Telecom for your physical line. You can opt for an alternative operator for phone and Internet. Phone calls are routed through the ADSL connection (VoIP) in that case, via a sophisticated modem (usually called box - Freebox, Livebox, Neufbox, Alicebox, Dartybox But beware, if your Internet connection or the mains supply goes, so does your phone - and TV channels if your pack includes them. By retaining an active France Telecom line. you can still use your house phone, Another disadvantage of dégroupage is that you can no longer use preselection to route your calls through a cheaper operator for mobile calls or international calls to destinations not included in the free call pack.
If you're on high-speed Internet, it may be a good idea still to have a 56k modem to use as backup if your high-speed connection is unavailable. Free provides such an access free of charge. You only pay the dial-up calling charge via your phone bill.
ISP's Internet Service Provider; In French: FAI: Fournisseur d'Accès Internet
Test your line for eligibility: Test-ligne-adsl.com
Dartybox.
Teleconnect. "Anglopack" offer from Budget Telecom, all in English. They offer landline, mobile and ADSL.
Orange (France Telecom).
Akéo.
Budget Telecom
Free.
Alice.
Nordnet.
Tele2.
SFR Neuf Cegetel Club-Internet AOL Neuf-Cegetel-SFR-AOL-Club-Internet is the bulky result of mergers.
Telephone, Fax, Internet
France Telecom has no monopoly on your service any more. That means that you can order your telephone service from anyone you wish. Your most simple choice is a basic France Telecom phone line. You pay a subscription and all call charges to them.
In this case, you still pay the France Telecom subscription but you pay the secondary operator for calls routed through them.
Note that special-rate numbers such as those beginning with 08 are always routed through France Telecom and billed by them.
Another excellent alternative is to use your computer and the Skype VOIP (voice over internet provider)
You are settling in France for professional purposes and would like to have a fax? Do you share your voice line or do you buy a separate fax line? The choice is not obvious. Sharing your voice line means people cannot fax you during lengthy phone calls.
If you don't get your new fax number on the ex-directory list (liste rouge) immediately, then you will be spammed with commercial faxes after just a couple of months.
Receive your faxes over the internet. There are several providers, and they issue you with your own fax number. Be sure that it's a geographic number, and not an overcharged 08-number that may not be reachable from abroad. www.arobase.org/services/fax.htm is a good source of information and has a list of Fax service providers.
In France, there are three mobile operators (SFR, Orange, Bouygues) with their own networks and more and more virtual operators that rent the physical network from them. All three physical operators have a reputation for very bad customer service. Most of France is covered, and the 3 physical operators are working together to provide common cover of the remaining parts.
It is very easy to change from one operator to another, and keep your mobile phone number. Subject to your contractual obligations (période d'engagement), all you have to do is sign up with the new operator and ask them to take over your existing mobile phone number. You must ask at the time you signing up, to keep your existing number. The new operator will cancel your contract with your old operator.
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