visas and residency cards
France may extend temporary staff hiring to tackle residency card delays
Minister says recruiting 500 extra staff this year ‘extremely useful’ and operation could be repeated
Reducing delays for residency card renewals remains a “priority” for prefectures, and contracts to hire temporary additional staff may be extended in 2027, France’s interior minister has said.
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez made the comments on Monday in front of the Law Committee of the Assemblée nationale, regarding the 2027 budget.
“Clearing the backlog [of applications] is a priority… clearly, a major priority,” he said.
“The backlog is shrinking, but it remains significant,” he added, without giving a precise figure.
A change last week now means that prefectures have to respond to a complete and submitted residency card renewal request within 90 days in most cases, down from the previous four months.
Additional staff to be kept on for 2027
In April, reports that there was a backlog of 930,000 applications made headlines and in May France’s Council of State ordered the government to improve the situation. Authorities were given a six-month deadline to improve a number of issues, many relating to complaints over the digitisation of services.
The situation had already been highlighted by France’s rights watchdog Défenseure des droits on several occasions, as those waiting too long for renewals could lose their residency and working rights in the country.
This included an increasing number of people who had been living in France for several years, including those on 10-year permits.
The minister ordered prefectures to deal with the issue, leading to the creation of a plan that saw 500 temporary staff hired and €2 million available in overtime pay to help clear the backlog.
“We could repeat this operation in 2027,” Mr Nuñez said, citing it as “extremely useful.”
However, immediate extension of the measure is likely dependent on the passage of the 2027 budget, and may need to be included in the text to immediately come into force at the start of 2027.
Discussions on the budget have taken a backseat in France amid the social unrest, but the government continues to face an uphill struggle to pass the text, needing to find support from other parties to gain enough votes.
