MOVING TO FRANCE: OVERVIEW AFTER SEVEN YEARS #1

We arrived in France on 16 April, 2014. I had retired just two weeks before. Our house in Pennsylvania had been put on the market but was as yet unsold. But we made it here and we have been here for just over seven years. I posted about our experiences after three years. It's time for an update.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

We have not regretted the decision to move to France for one second. Not one single second.

BUREAUCRACY

It's been an unforgettable couple of years for French bureaucrats. Brexit and COVID have generated the need to design, distribute, amend, interpret, and enforce all manner of forms and procedures.  

There are tens of thousands of Brits who spend from a few weeks to many months in holiday houses or primary residences throughout much of France, although the major concentrations are on the French side of the Channel and down along the Med. No longer citizens of an EU country, Brits will have to live by different rules. They will be limited to the number of days they can stay in France if they do not choose to become legal residents. There are driving licenses to consider, tax questions to consider, healthcare choices to consider.

And each change of status requires a new form. The French are getting better at new forms, though. COVID has caused electronic submissions to replace many face-to-face encounters. And they usually work reasonably well, against all expectations.

COVID has been a true test for a high-functioning bureaucracy. There were times that you couldn't leave the house without a piece of paper that detail your justification for breaking confinement. And the rollout of the vaccine was painfully slow. But once the French figured it out, the process that we went through through to get our two jabs was easy to navigate and efficiently accomplished. In fact, just about every expat that we discussed it with agreed that the vaccination centers were admirably well run.

We can only hope that, once COVID has been put behind us - to the extent that it can be - the French will go back to their normal, everyday blizzards of paperwork. To make a successful submission to a French bureaucrat, you just need to get good in the language and be polite. It's the best that you can do. Oh, and maintain a folder of every official piece of paper that you own, with a copy, and translated.

FOOD AND WINE

I can't say it too often. The snozzberries taste like snozzberries. (Google that quote if its origin doesn't immediately pop to mind. We are the makers of music and the dreamers of dreams. But I digress.) Veggies in France are not grown for their ability to be shipped across a country. They are grown for their taste. And since we live close to the Mediterranean, Spain and Italy and North Africa are as close to us as D.C. is to Boston, so most everything is in season somewhere nearby all year round. But we try to buy as local as possible because local French strawberries in season are exquisite. Mouth candy. Tomatoes come down to just about a dollar a pound when they start coming in. The asparagus farm down the way will sell you spears pulled from the ground today, sorted into whatever thickness that is your favorite, for a few dollars a pound. Apricots and peaches are sold in sheds at the edge of the orchards for a couple of dollars a pound. You get the picture. Diet changes with the seasons to take advantage of brief periods of peak local ripeness.

You're a meat eater? So as not to put off my vegan friends, I won't go into full, lyric mode when describing the taste of locally sourced lamb and poultry and pork. They taste the way that they are supposed to taste. It’s that simple. If you like lamb, you will REALLY like the lamb in France.

That's not to say that French comestibles are perfect, at least to this American expat. Corn on the cob here is just a step up from what we'd call field corn in the Northeast, nowhere in the neighborhood of Jersey sweet corn that literally melts in the mouth. Beef has a different taste, as it should given the differences in medication and diet. It needs getting used to...or a nice marinade. Peanut butter is expensive, particularly if you insist on it being mindfully produced. But I pick nits. 

Wine? We drink vrac, wine dispensed from a vat into a five-liter container in bulk at less than $2.00 a liter. When we have company, bottles of tasty sipping pink start at $5 or less. You can spend as much or as little as your taste coupled with your budget allows, all directly from vineyards just down the road.

Bottom line? We eat great for less money. I’ll tackle restaurants and other aspects of shopping in subsequent posts.

HEALTHCARE

Cathey and I have each had serious medical conditions requiring hospitalization since moving here. (We’re fine.) Our care could not have been better. In fact, when Cathey’s surgeon asked if she would like to go back to the States for the procedure, she just laughed. 

Healthcare in France is less expensive than in the USofA, about one-half of the cost per person. And healthcare in France has better outcomes, with life expectancy higher than the USofA and infant mortality lower. How can that be? Well, costs are kept low both because it’s a single-payer system and because prices are controlled at all levels, from office visits to your general practitioner to your prescription medications.

And the cost to the consumer is more than reasonable. Your ‘social charge’ is based on your income, certain pensions are excluded from the calculation, the amount of income exempted is reasonable, and the percentage is not dissimilar to FICA. Approximately 70% of costs are covered and, if you want supplemental insurance to cover the rest, costs for that are reasonable too. There are lots of choices for top-up insurance, from hospital only plans to plans that cover everything. We pay about $75.00 apiece per month for a plan in the middle. We pay nothing for drugs, doctor visits, most tests, and most hospitalizations. There's an active, competitive insurance marketplace that might seem odd but that works well in a sophisticated socialized system.

The fact the the USofA can’t institute a similar system is one reason that we won’t be returning any time soon.

NEXT UP

I will be continuing this series for a couple of weeks. Let me know in the comments if there are any particular topics that you would like me to discuss.

SouthFranceAmerican 6 - What I Don't Like About France

HOW FRENCH BUREAUCRACY WORKS...REALLY

I am fond of saying that the French didn't invent bureaucracy but they did refine bureaucracy to a high art. And indeed, although the French economist Jacques Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay is credited with having coined the word, pejoratively at the very outset, there is convincing proof that bureaucracies predated the current French version by millennia. Why are our most common examples of ancient scratchings on clay tablets lists of mercantile goods or stockpiles in royal coffers if not for the overriding need of humankind to keep official records as though they had value in and of themselves?

We all hate paperwork. I get it. Damn those bureaucrats, keeping us buried in piles of paper so that they can draw a pay check. Petty. They find reasons to deny our most reasonable requests. Their rules are arcane, defying understanding. How wonderful life would be without those officious paper pushers.

You are wrong. Bureaucrats are your friends. Yes. I repeat. Bureaucrats are your friends. You just haven't been viewing them through the proper lens.

You see, you have the idea that bureaucracies are created to throw obstacles in the paths of the daily lives of ordinary citizens. Not true. Not at all. Rather, bureaucracies exist to confer power on the petty bureaucrat. That's the real secret. And though that sounds dangerous, think about it. The petty bureaucrat is so well versed in the confusing, often contradictory jumble of rules and regulations that they are charged to enforce that they know how to create any result, circumvent any prohibition. Approve any request.

Approve any request?

Yes. Approve any request. They just need a reason.

How does that work, you ask?

Well, 50 years ago in Mexico, it meant keeping a wad of money folded into your passport. If you had a problem with a functionary of the Mexican government, you would first be asked for that passport. You would hand it over, wad and all. It would be returned, intact but lighter. Papers stamped. Problem solved.

That was then. In Mexico. This is now. In France. I wouldn't try bribery. Nope. As tempting as it might be, I wouldn't. Here's what I would do, what I have done. I would contact a professional, someone with experience dealing with the bureaucracy/bureaucrat in question.

Money changes hands, it's true. But we're talking fee for service in the professional sense. Not bribery.

Case in point:

We are Americans. We don't have an EU passport, any EU identification cards, or any other form of paperwork that would ease us into the French social system. Our one saving grace is that we are of full retirement age. (Saving grace? Being old? Ah, well...) In theory, all that we had to do was to fill out the paperwork, make an appointment, and we'd be on our way. And how many times have you heard that? Rather, how many times have you heard the horror stories of dossiers thick and overflowing, of requests for more documentation and more documentation and more? And after not months but years, the desired result is still somewhere over the horizon? How many times?

We chose a difference route. We have an English-speaking French accountant - Sarah Vedrenne of AdviceFrance. We began using her when we bought our holiday house in 2005 and rented it out when we weren't using it. There's history there. so we called Sarah and asked her to assist us with our titres de sejour and our registration with CPAM. Sarah had us round to her office in her home up above Pezenas. She gave us a list of documents to bring including those that required an official translation. When we arrived, we reviewed the documentation piece by piece. We reviewed our American tax forms. We discussed what qualified as French income and what did not. Sarah made photocopies. We called the sub-prefecture and made an appointment. On the day, Sarah met us in the waiting room.

Now comes the good part.

When our names were called, Sarah greeted our examiner with a smile and a handshake. They had danced this dance before. Sarah not only had every document required but she had them arranged in the order in which the examiner asked for them. Question asked. Question answered. No muss. No fuss. No searching through files for that one particular, elusive piece of paper. Our two dossiers were opened, completed, and approved in less time than it took the single woman before us to complete her interview. Smooth as silk.

Having been approved for our titres de sejour, Sarah immediately filed with CPAM. Yes, a round or two of additional documentation was required. And yes, once approved we had to file a raft of paperwork to get refunds for our expenses back to the date of application. But less than six months after that application, our bank account was enriched by several hundred euros, the amount that CPAM covers for visits to the doctor and for our prescription meds.

Could we have done it by ourselves for ourselves? I have no doubt. Would it have gone as smoothly? Not likely. Was it worth Sarah's fee? Every penny.

One last point. While most English speakers that we know use Sarah, and while most are well satisfied as are we, there are some who are not so enamored. That's fine. This post is not intended as an endorsement of AdviceFrance. Rather, it is meant to point to a path that cuts through the bureaucracy, a path that has proven successful for us and many others, a path that starts with hiring a guide. Your choice of guides is your choice.

Dress with respect, office casual. Smile. Be polite.

Hire a guide.