What happened to the proposal in France for automatic residency permit renewals?

The bill, put forward by Socialist MP Colette Capdevielle, was adopted by the National Assembly and transmitted to the Senate in December 2025.

The proposal concerns two types of residency documents – the carte de séjour pluriannuelle, which can be valid for several years, and the 10-year carte de résident. It is aimed at people who have already established long-term residency in France, rather than those applying for a residency permit for the first time.

Under the proposal, people who already hold one of these permits would no longer have to go through the full renewal process each time their card expires.

READ ALSO: French préfectures and carte de séjour delays – your questions answered

Instead, the renewal would be largely automatic, with the applicant making a request for a new card and the administration checking whether there were any legal reasons why it should not be renewed. The bill provides for exceptions where, for example, there are grounds for refusing or withdrawing a residency right.

The idea is to reduce the amount of paperwork for both applicants and préfectures, while also helping to tackle the long delays that have affected residency permit renewals in recent years.

What is the status of the bill now?

The proposal has not yet been examined by the Senate. Diane Fogelman of Amnesty France told The Local that there was currently no date scheduled for the bill to be examined in parliament. 

Fogelman said the parliamentary calendar was particularly limited in the period leading up to the next presidential election, with MPs and senators also expected to spend time debating the government’s budget and other legislation.

She said it appeared “unfortunately unlikely” that the proposal would be examined before the presidential election.

If the Senate does not examine the text before then, she warned that it could potentially fall off the parliamentary agenda, which can happen with parliamentary proposals that are not taken up before the end of a legislative period.

She added that the aim would now be to get the proposal formally placed on the Senate’s agenda for debate.

Long delays at préfectures, difficulty in getting appointments and admin glitches mean that the regular renewal of the carte de séjour residency permit is often a lot more complicated than it sounds.

And at least one French MP understood that – Parti Socialiste’s Colette Capdevielle previously describing the complicated renewal process as a “glaring injustice”.

“We are managing to clog up the system for less than 1 percent of applications,” she told parliament in December last year.

The motion was adopted by 98 votes to 37 in the National Assembly – however, the government has said it was against the proposal and it seemingly passed on a day when most centrist or right-wing MPs were not in parliament.

Given the Senate is dominated by the right the bill is considered unlikely to be approved, which will disappoint and anger many foreigners in France.