Difficulties with renewing residency cards and using the interior ministry’s ANEF website are flagged up in the annual report by France’s Défenseur des droits (defender of rights).
Its report for the year 2025 showed the authority – which supports members of the public experiencing difficulties in dealings with public bodies – received 17% more requests for help than in 2024 (165,011 in total) and 70% more requests than in 2020.
Out of these, 40% related to foreigners’ rights, up from 10% in 2025, and more than three quarters concerned difficulties when renewing residency cards or when trying to use ANEF.
Excessive delays, plus ANEF malfunctions, have placed thousands of people in an ‘irregular’ immigration situation, causing loss of rights including loss of jobs and social security rights, the Défenseur says.
More broadly, the authority notes a “spectacular increase” in reports of difficulties in dealings with public services, saying surveys show that 61% now report experiencing them, compared to 39% in 2016.
The Défenseur, inscribed in France’s Constitution, is an independent rights and liberties watchdog which reviews the relationship between state bodies and the public as well as experiences of discrimination (not restricted to state bodies) plus the defence of children’s rights.
Headed by lawyer and former journalist Claire Hédon, who has the title of Défenseure des Droits, it acts at high level, analysing problems nationally and feeding back to MPs and others, as well as providing on-the-ground help to people experiencing difficulties.
Its decisions and opinions, particularly in discrimination cases, are often published (in anonymised form) helping to clarify how laws are applied and offering guidance for handling similar situations.
Its new report comes as the interior ministry outlined plans aiming to reduce residency card delays, including by recruiting 500 new staff for prefectures.
It comes also as this year prefectures face increased renewal requests from Britons with Withdrawal Agreement residency cards. Their renewals are not done via Anef but many prefectures have put in place procedures hosted on another website, Démarche Numérique (on the whole, reported to be simple).
Read also: two-thirds polled say they struggle with online French admin
Residency card delays and malfunctions
The report says Défenseur agents frequently hear such complaints as “I just want to speak to a real person”, “I just need someone to give me explanations”, “I’ve called dozens of times but it keeps hanging up on me”, “I lost my password, now I’m blocked”, or “I do everything asked of me but it’s never enough”.
This revolves around more procedures being put online, less availability of face-to-face staff, and increasing complexity of administrative procedures.
While some people find that online procedures are able to save them time, increasing ‘digitalisation’ creates difficulties for many older or less IT-savvy people, as well as people with low incomes and people with disabilities, the Défenseur says.
However, today even some highly-educated professionals report struggling, the report says, “and young people, at ease with their phones and social networks, can get into more difficulty when it is a question of having to fill in administrative forms or identify themselves via authentication systems that keep changing”.
When speaking of foreign people's issues in particular, the report states that delays and IT issues are affecting thousands who previously had valid residency cards.
“Deprived of a récépissé [application receipts given at in-person prefecture appointments which prolong rights during processing], they lose their job, see their social aids suspended, have to interrupt their studies or give up on travel plans, even though they diligently carried out all the formalities required to respect the procedures in place.”
There are also reports of some people having difficulty with applying for French nationality, which is also now undertaken via ANEF.
Insufficient face-to-face accompaniment
The report for 2025 notes in general an increase in 20% of help requests related to public services: excessive waiting times, unresponsive services, complex procedures, and digitalisation with insufficient ‘human’ accompaniment.
In some cases this is leading to people not obtaining rights they are due, such as income support or unemployment benefits.
Problems with access to healthcare are also flagged, such as in some cases appointments having to be made online only, insufficient disabled accessibility or lack of interpreters.
In the area of children’s rights, the Défenseur points to malfunctions in services helping children at risk, insufficient help for children with mental health needs and difficulties in access to good education for children from disadvantaged backgrounds or with disabilities.
The report also points to concerns over policing, including examples of excessive use of force, of insufficient respect of people’s right to freedom of expression and of poor treatment of some people based on their foreign nationality.
Interior ministry sets out action plans
In a Le Figaro interview about his plans to improve the situation with regard to foreign people, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said “the objective is to cut in half the processing time for residency cards, to 55 days on average compared to 117 last year”.
In a third of prefectures this average is more than 120 days, he notes, in an instruction document sent to prefectures, dated April 5.
In it, he says it should be a priority to avoid people having periods of loss of rights, in particular foreign people who work.
One idea to stop this will be for ANEF users to automatically receive renewals of attestations de prolongation d’instruction [a kind of récépissé issued online] for up to 12 months.
Mr Nuñez also wants lists of documents required for cards to be updated and for prefectures to make sure they are not asking for anything unnecessary.
Digitalisation of residency card procedures “must go along with a human accompaniment for those who are most fragile – which supposes having trained teams, and an organisation and procedures that are clear and understandable for the users as for the agents”.
On Friday there was also a hearing at France’s top administrative court the Conseil d’Etat on the topic of residency card delays and ANEF malfunctions, on request of several associations helping people in difficulty.
The rapporteur public [a senior court official] stated during the hearing that “this is not a minor matter at stake” and that it is a question of “guaranteeing access to public services” for a “particularly vulnerable” category of people.
In another instruction sent to prefectures, dated April 7, Mr Nuñez set out further demands relating to prefectures prioritising “integration of foreign people through acquisition of the French language and values of the Republic” and “reinforcing the integration of foreigners through work”.
