Do UK-born dogs need I-CAD registration to travel from France?
British couple face delays registering their dogs with France's I-CAD
The dogs have been living in France since 2020
Supplied by reader
A British couple living in Pyrénées-Orientales with two UK-born dogs have queried the process for registration with France's I-CAD after saying they tried unsuccessfully to register them this year.
They have been living in France since 2020 and have French EU pet passports for the dogs, but only realised in January that they should have registered them with I-CAD after a new vet pointed this out following a move from the north of France.
They sent off the registration documents but have since heard nothing.
“They have travelled to and from the UK on these passports for years. Now we are concerned there may be problems when travelling, which we will need to do soon,” the couple said.
How to register a pet with I-CAD
Current rules say that if you bring dogs into France from abroad to keep them here for more than three months, an application should be made to I-CAD within a week, typically arranged with help from a vet.
Notification should be received from I-CAD by text or email, allowing you to download a copy of the pet's new French identification documents.
Usually, vets should check I-CAD registration when issuing or renewing an EU pet passport. However, our archives suggest this was not done systematically before 2022.
Can unconfirmed registration affect travel?
From our research, there is no reason why a lack of confirmation of I-CAD registration would prevent travel, as long as the dogs' EU pet passports are valid and their rabies vaccinations are up to date.
Keeping a pet without registering it can potentially result in a fine, although we found no indication of an automatic penalty for making a late application.
I-CAD said it did not know why the application might be blocked and invited the readers to send an online query via i-cad.fr/contact. In such a situation, it would also be possible to ask a vet for help.
It said that “as they seem to have been in France with their dogs for a certain period of time, their dossier would not be processed by the department's DDPP” (the departmental authority responsible for population protection).
The latter could be relevant, for example, in cases where a pet had recently been imported and there were health concerns.
I-CAD added: “The only thing we might ask for to validate the registration might be to supply proof of a rabies vaccination done in France, should they not be able to prove having a valid rabies vaccination when the dogs were brought in.”
