Rare plumage

On the way back to the UK at Saint Malo I saw several examples of a normally rare sight. Our right hand drive Honda is registered now in France with French plates and a RHD car with French plates betrays its owner as one of the 230,000 Brits now living permanently in France. In the summer it’s a rare sight at the ferry port but, like birds flocking for their annual migration, the pre-Christmas return to the mother country provides the opportunity for multiple sightings and a shared knowledge between the owners; “so, why did you leave then?”

Like so many EU regulations the one on vehicle registration is a bit woolly. Technically, once a vehicle has been in France for six months it should be re-registered, of course this involves une formulaire and various pieces of paper – the essential items for dealing with the bureaucracy here. Equally unsurprisingly many people don’t bother, it’s easy to get a French insurance policy on a foreign registered car and, if the lights are changed, the car will pass a controle technique (=MoT test for UK readers) so provided the gendarmes don’t take an interest why go to the trouble of re-registering? My Dutch friend Isabelle, who’s lived in France for years and speaks English so well she teaches it in Nantes, still drives an old Golf with Dutch plates. “Just too much trouble” she told me when I asked her why she wasn’t on French plates.

Even woollier is the EU law on driving licences. In a strange European version of the Bermuda Triangle my driving licence is currently stateless. The law says that if you change residency between EU member states you may apply for a driving licence in your new country of residence (the “may” was added to “reduce unnecessary bureaucracy”). I’ve chosen not to apply for a French licence and so I’m driving legally in France on a British licence – so far so good. But, in a truly bizarre twist, DVLA won’t issue a UK licence to a foreign address and so my old UK licence continues in a sort of limbo state. Worst of all, as the address shown is my old UK address and I may be committing an offence in the UK if I drive in the UK with a UK licence that doesn’t show my current address, but I’m absolutely fine in France or any of the other 23 or 25 or however many it is now member states. This is so complicated that I, like many other Brits in France, drive round with a printout of the EU Statutory Instrument in my car in English and French as a kind of “starter for 10” with the gendarmerie should we ever be stopped.

Might have “reduced unnecessary bureaucracy” but it’s not helped the paper shortage ;o)