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These pages give you a an overview of what you need to know to live in France. I think it encompasses everything (but let me know if it doesn't: web@pyreneesthemes.com):
Depending on where you're going to, you may find it useful to check out my Pyrenees Oriental guide.
This is primarily directed at those currently living in the UK who are intending to move to France. However, most of it is relatively general and broadly applicable to moving to other European countries and leaving other countries although obviously things like the phone number for social security will be different.
It's best to start planning a move to France well ahead of time, particularly so if you don't speak French. There is a lot to do and probably little time to do it.
for the spouse or "common law" spouse of a citizen of a European Union country you can get a European Residence Permit (Carte de Séjour Europeenne). This is only required if the spouse is not themselves an EU citizen and is by far the simplest "visa" to get; the parents and children (up to age 21) of both partners can be included on it. This "visa" is free and they can't turn you down for it. If your partner is the citizen of a visa country (ie a country whose citizens would normally require a visa to enter France), they can obtain the equivalent visa abroad, otherwise you just turn up and apply at the local mairie (not the prefecture). The only documentation that they are allowed to ask for (they may ask for more, but you are not required to provide it) is the passports of everyone to be included on the permit and a document proving the relationship (eg a birth certificate for a child naming the European parent) see Europa (an excellent reference that you'll use a lot);
The more fluent your French, the simpler it will be when you get here and the sooner you start, the easier it is. How can you do it?
start by looking up local night classes with a view to moving to A-level conversation standard (it will take the equivalent of 60 lessons of 2 hours to do this, 40 if you already have a rusty GCSE/o-level);
next, sign up for more intensive conversation classes with the Alliance Française (you could do this in tandem with step one, but it could put you off as the classes are quite intimidating); and finally
start the Open University class L120 Overture: A Fresh Start in French and the corresponding residential LXR122 Action in French.
And that's it: you should be fluent. Night classes usually run to about 20 weeks per year so step one will take two or three years, depending on whether or not you have that rusty o-level/GCSE. The Open University course runs from February to September. If you need to make a choice, concentrate on spoken French as that's what you'll need first.
If you can't make it to night classes, try Linguaphone to get you up to the Open University entrance standard.|
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Once you get your French up to speed, you need to keep it current eg using magazines such as La Vie Outre-Manche and Le Rendez-Vous Français, www.concordefrench.com . It is issued 6 time a year for about £20. The address is 8, Skye Close, Maidstone, Kent, ME15 9SJ. The TV is also useful and you can get the French channel TV5 on channel 825 of Sky and several French language channels are online eg Live TV France and Live TV Belgium
If you're looking for an additional source of income, teaching English can be quite profitable. You can get a Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) qualification here:
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Even if you are absolutely determined to live here permanently, it's best to keep your options open and therefore, if you can afford to, I would recommend that you retain your house in the UK for at least the first two years that you are in France. This probably means that you will want to rent out your house so you will need to inform your mortgage provider and insurance company in addition to appointing a rental agent (it's not realistic to handle the rental details yourself if you're in a different country and your mortgage company will usually insist that you have an agent).
Although you usually can continue your existing mortgage whilst renting the house out, it's not always entirely practical to do this and you'll find that sooner or later you want to change to a buy to let type mortgage. It's best to do this before you leave the UK as applying for a mortgage whilst overseas is far from easy.
There are too many banks and credit card companies to give comprehensive information about here, but it is possible to give some general recommendations:
If you haven't got them already, it's useful to open the following:
American Express Blue/Gold/Platinum credit card: they will let you transfer your account to their French outfit (although since the UK credit cards [not their charge cards] are free and the French ones charge, you may not want to do this for a while);
Citibank Direct Current Account: once you've got this, you can open a euro account with them and transfer money back and forth between euros and sterling more or less free;
Nationwide Building Society's Flexaccount (current account) and credit card: they allow free withdrawals in any currency;
Halifax or Bank of Scotland One credit card: 9 months interest free and only 9.9% after that, they will increase limits when you are abroad;
MBNA credit card: 6 to 9 months interest free, they are noted for their generous credit limits which they will increase when you're abroad.
The big banks don't really feature in the above recommendations because they generally charge a fortune to use abroad. Apart from the Citibank, Nationwide and Barclays, all UK credit and debit cards charge about £1.50 per withdrawal plus a currency conversion fee of about 2.75% of the amount. Barclays don't charge the £1.50 on their debit cards when used in BNP machines in France, though they still charge the 2.75% foreign exchange fee.
You can generally open offshore accounts after you move abroad, the above are those that need to be opened before you move.
It's useful to set up a UK 0844 local rate number before you go which you can then quote to the various banks and others. They're available free from eSMS and also useful for friends & relatives.
You don't actually need to inform the schools that your kids are leaving but doing so will let you get a final report which will be useful when you try to get them into French schools (although the French schools will test them anyway).
France uses 220V 50Hz with European (two pin) plugs. This means that all UK electrical appliances will work in France
The French TV standard is PAL SECAM. UK TVs will work but usually in black and white; an easy way to check this is to go into the setup screen of your TV - if it has an option for France then it should work in colour;
France is DVD Region 2 so UK DVDs will work. American/Canada are region 1, Australia/New Zealand region 4 and will not work unless the player is multi-region;
Sometimes the 50Hz will throw American/Canadian clocks off as they use 60Hz (this depends on how old your clock is: modern ones don't use the mains frequency to keep time).
To simplify your first few weeks, it's useful to buy several four gang sockets and change the plug on these. You can then plug in your appliances and space out the process of changing the plugs on everything. Two years down the line, we're still using a couple of these!
If your mobile phone is unlocked, you can buy a French SIM card and it will work. You need proof of ID and proof of address even for a prepaid phone.
Strictly speaking, once you leave the UK, you aren't entitled to any UK health benefits. However, in practice most expats will take several copies of the e111 European health form with them (this form, available from all Post Offices, is being replaced by a card at the end of 2005 so this is a limited time offer). When you use an e111, the French authorities take it off you.
If you have a pre-existing condition, the French authorities (usually CPAM) must cover you. This most commonly arises with pregnancy apparently and the first thing they'll say is "you have no cover". This is not true. European freedom of movement legislation obliges France to treat you as though you were French and had always been French therefore, no matter what you've got, they have to cover it because that's what they'd do with a French citizen. Having said that, it can take some time to convince them of their obligations.
Although you really should tell your doctor and dentist that you're leaving, it's best not to in case you need the odd prescription if you're back in the UK at some stage. In theory you should use your French health card and claim the money when you get back to France but I suspect that it's a lot cheaper for the UK health service to just provide the treatment than to go through the administrative work to claim it back from France.
If you're in one of the many "unusual" groups for whom there is some debate over whether or not you're covered, it might be an idea to buy an international healthcare plan to ease your mind for the first year or so:
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The French authorities require confirmation from the UK authorities have stopped paying you child benefit etc. before they will start paying you their equivalent. When you call the child benefit people to say you're leaving, they'll suspend payments immediately and send you out a form which lets them assess whether or not you've actually left (just because you're living in France doesn't necessarily mean that you can't receive child benefit). I've used the example of child benefit, but a similar process applies to other benefits. There is a single social security office in France (CAF) which deals with all your benefits so in some cases you may need additional confirmation from the UK that benefits have stopped, notably when you arrive pregnant.
Tell the Inland Revenue. It's a lot simpler to leave on April 5th if you can arrange that, but not always possible, of course. If you will be renting out your UK house, the rental agent will give you a landlord abroad form to complete, which needs to be stamped by the French tax authorities (they won't do that 'til you've paid some French tax). Incidentally, legally you only need to tell a UK government department once that you've moved which can mean that you can quite legally keep money overpaid by the Inland Revenue Child Benefit section and Inland Revenue Child Tax Credit Office: the thinking is that the citizen can't be expected to know how a government department is organised. In our own case we told the "Inland Revenue" twice before we moved, and three times after yet still received demands for repayment from the Child Tax place and various bits of the Inland Revenue (including one place we told three times!) still post things to our old address over a year later.
As for normal moves, you need to tell the utility companies that you're leaving. However, none of them seem set up to have someone actually leaving the country which causes a few, seemingly, unavoidable problems after your arrival in France. Anyway, you need to tell:
DO NOT tell Sky that you are moving abroad or they'll disconnect you: transfer your subscription to the address of a friend or relative instead, preferably one who doesn't have Sky themselves (the Sky box will work in France but you will need a larger satellite dish, usually 80cm: about 30€). If you're planning to upgrade or change your Sky subscription, you must do this from a UK phone number; do it from a French phone and they'll cancel your subscription. If you call Sky about your account from a phone outside the UK, they'll cut you off so you need a friend in the UK to make any calls to change subscription details for you.
You'll need a pet passport for each of your pets. I suspect that it's simpler to donate your various plants to friends & relatives but there aren't any restrictions on bringing domestic plants (there are sometimes import bans on some agricultural plants and some haulage companies won't take them).
Don't tell your current employer that you're leaving 'til it's absolutely certain that you are!
This is covered in more detail in our Living Abroad page.
Do it yourself, or get a mover in? If you're moving to northern France, it's probably cheaper to hire a truck yourself, for southern France it's still a little cheaper but not by as much as you'd think: it's going to take at least two days driving to get there, two more to get back, a day to unload (at least) and then there's the hotel room in each direction, the petrol, the ferry and all the tolls. We did it ourselves and thoroughly enjoyed it though don't underestimate the amount of work required. Either way, you need to pack up your life in boxes and that takes longer than moving those boxes into a truck (which is pretty much all the movers will do for you).
For the DIY approach, you need to check locally for truck rental which is not quite so simple as renting a car. The big movers are Bishops, Britannia and Pickfords among many others. In the middle ground is Roads Ahead which operates on the basis of you doing the loading and unloading whilst they get your stuff moved thus saving the very stressful drive (and it is stressful - we did it all ourselves so we know). Get quotes before committing yourself; unless you have a truly massive house, go for a part load option which is considerably cheaper (this means that your stuff shares a container with someone else's move and limits your choice of moving date). Cost? Either way it works around around £2000 for a small house; the only way to really reduce that is to do some serious dumping before you leave but even then you would need to leave out the big things ie the furniture and it's going to cost a fortune to replace it in France (furniture is very expensive here).
Remember all those friends, relatives and places that you always meant to go to? Well, if you want to do it, you're running out of time. We packed in more local tourism in three months than we had in the previous ten years and visited many a relative who'd not seen us in several years. Having said that, you can always fly back and see whoever/whatever you missed and the people are sure to be over to see you sooner or later (many a chambre d'hôte or gîte is often full with friends and relatives). If you'll be running a chambre d'hôte, gîte, hotel, etc. then it's definitely best to decide on a discount policy early on and make it quite clear that whilst everyone is welcome to come, and they'll get a good discount, it won't be free.
If you know of anything else which could usefully go here let me know (web@pyreneesthemes.com); I promise not to put you on any mailing lists!