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How do we get a five-year clean criminal record report in France?
You can obtain your casier judiciaire record by requesting it online or by post. We explain
Reader question: We are moving from France to Spain and for our Spanish visa we need a five-year criminal record check covering our time in France. Who do we need to contact to get this report? T.B.
The check required relates to the country/countries you have lived in for the last five years, as opposed to any offences committed during this timeframe so, if you have only been in France, the French document should be all you need.
The French criminal record check is called the casier judiciaire and it comes in several levels of information. The first two levels are only available to officials, so it is the bulletin 3 that you need.
This includes only more serious offences which have not yet become ‘spent’ and wiped off the record.
You can request a copy either online at this link or by post.
For online applications, you either sign in using the FranceConnect service or otherwise follow extra steps – for example, providing your email and postal address and a scan of an identity document, such as a carte de séjour or passport.
Read more: FranceConnect: why you may not have access to it
If there is nothing in your record, you will receive a bulletin confirming this, by email, within an hour. Otherwise, you can request it by post, which usually takes about two weeks.
If your record is not blank, you will receive the bulletin by registered post within two weeks.
If you wish to order the bulletin by post, you need to send in form 10071*14 with a copy of your proof of ID to:
Casier judiciaire national
44317 NANTES CEDEX 3.
You can fill it in online and print your pre-filled form on the service publique website or find a blank form here.
It is possible also to request a European multilingual standard form (translation aid) in Spanish together with the bulletin which might avoid the need for a translation by a traducteur assermenté (sworn translator).
However, this is only offered to French nationals.
No ‘apostille’ formality is needed for EU countries if the bulletin is blank, but if that is not the case and the Spanish authorities request this, it can be obtained via the appeal court of Rennes following the steps listed here.
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