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End in sight for France’s driving licence swap delays?
The CERT centre at Nantes prefecture, which deals with the exchange of foreign driving licences for French licences, has been reorganised and is dealing with new dossiers within three months, the prefecture has said.
A new team is now tasked with sorting out the oldest dossiers.
Those waiting and in ‘urgent’ situations can find a contact form here: tinyurl.com/uypuzfv (you must create an online account or use FranceConnect).
It comes as Connexion has continued to hear from – and has passed on concerns about – readers waiting for over a year to obtain French licences.
These include those who are ‘obliged’ to swap because, for example, their UK licence was expiring or they had committed a driving offence that incurs a loss of points from a French licence.
The British Embassy has also been in talks with the CERT.
One reader, aged 70, who applied in March 2019 as her UK licence was expiring in July told how her car insurer contacted the CERT for her and was told she must take a French driving test as her licence had now expired. Connexion will be following up on her case.
Delays started after Nantes was tasked with all swaps in 2017. It says demand was higher than expected. Previously this work was done by local prefectures.
This year CERT said in the case of Britons it would only deal with obligatory swaps due to the backlog. It has asked that any non-obligatory requests only be made again from April 1, 2020 preferably via an online procedure to be launched.
France has passed a law stating that in the case of a no-deal Brexit Britons living in France and using UK licences at the time could continue to do so.
