nicktonight

Can someone who has a house in France, but who is non-resident, buy a car in France with French registration and insurance for use when he/she comes to France
Thanks in advance for advice

cyrian

Yes.
If you have a house in France even rented i.e an address - then you can register a car.
This is a different thing from being "tax resident".
Your problem will be producing a no-claims bonus which you will need to get a reasonable premium for your insurance.
There are threads on the subject of insurance on this site if you do a search.
Good luck

EuroTrash

Expats sometimes argue for ever and a day as to whether it is technically legal but yes you can do it, many people do, I did before I moved here. You just have to be able to produce evidence of your address, such as a couple of utilities bills.
The only thing to be aware of is if you're resident in another country, you can't legally drive your French registered car in your own country. So it would have to stay here, you couldn't use it to go to and fro.

nicktonight

you can't legally drive your French registered car in your own country. [/QUOTE]

Amazing European legislation!

Many thanks for your clear answers. I was in fact thinking of buying a second hand van for one year as I have to do a lot of shuffling things around Europe this year and second hand vans are ridiculously expensive where I am in Italy.

cyrian

It is quite normal in France to register a car in joint names. This allows a surviving spouse to legally sell the car - or you don't need the other registered owner to be present.
Another BE member had a problem in doing this because the prefecture wanted proof of his wife's maiden name.
Our prefecture didn't demand this - just gave them photocopies of passports as proof of identity.

EuroTrash

Realistically, if you're not Italian either and don't have an Italian passport or driving licence, you'll probably be able to create enough dust for nobody to bother. It wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb like it would if you were a Brit with a British passport and British driving licence and a home in Britain driving round Britain in a French registered car.

Novocastrian

That was me. But is it really true that you can't drive your French registered car in the UK (if you are tax resident in the UK).

At the moment I'm tax resident in Canada and I took the French car to the UK for a visit last summer. I can't do that in the future?

EuroTrash

Importing vehicles into the UK | Business Wales
"Driving with a foreign registration number

UK residents aren’t allowed to use non-UK registered vehicles on UK roads. The only exceptions are if you:

- work in another EU member state and use an EU-registered company car temporarily in the UK
- lease an EU-registered car and use this temporarily in the UK"

It's the same rule as why people who are resident in France shouldn't be driving UK registered cars. And probably equally unenforceable, because how can you tell from looking at a car, what country its driver lives in.

nicktonight

Does this apply to the whole of Europe or just to the UK (as we drive on the left for instance)?
You would have though that this would have been made legal after the introduction of EU standardised vehicle registration plates. Cross-border families must find this particularly difficult to comply with

Novocastrian

My thought too. But I suppose if a French car is serially street parked outside a UK house then a local plod might eventually ask questions. Moral: have a garage.

EuroTrash

AFAIK it's an EU-wide rule. I guess the logic is partly that it makes people accountable as regards traffic offences, and also if there wasn't this rule, people being people they would look for ways to get their cars registered in whichever country has the lowest registration taxes, probably Luxembourg or somewhere, rather than the country where they live if taxes there are higher. So you could live in the UK, buy your car in the Grand Duchy via your second cousin 3 times removed who happens to live there, use it in the UK and pay no road tax and and clock up as many speeding and parking offences as you like and never pay a penny.

bigglesworth

Of course if you DID use it illegally in the UK, your insurance would be null and void.

Novocastrian

So, all those UK residents of France driving a UK plated and insured car there are in fact uninsured?

bigglesworth

Novo My comment was about an EU car on British roads for a UK resident. The wording in ETs quote seems quite clear to me.

AS to UK residents of France, clearly that depends on what you mean and what the law is. If you mean people who are legally resident in France, but who keep their UK cars MOTed and registered in the UK, but drive them 11 months of the year in France, I don't know what French law says, but I imagine it would depend on the insurance company.

If the insurance company is British, I think I read that the number of days you are allowed to keep a UK insured vehicle abroad is a maximum (with permission) of 6 months. If the company is French and prepared to insure you (knowing all the facts) then I cannot see a problem.
As to UK residents of France who keep UK vehicles in France without MOTs etc, surely nobody would do such a thing?

Novocastrian

No of course not. What a thought!

I'm glad this topic has come up though since our short - medium term plans have changed fairly recently. As I thin k you knew it has been our intention for several years now to retire full time to France, but within the last few months a wrinkle has come up.

My FIL (who will be 88 next birthday) is still living at his home 4 years after his wife died. He's amazingly resilient but still faces increasing health problems and frankly couldn't really manage it if it wasn't for my SIL who lives about 20 min away from him.

Now, however, my SIL will be relocating much further away and we think it's high time we took over the responsibility of looking out for the old man.

So, we've revised our thinking and intend to rent an apartment near to his place (in Gosforth, a suburb of Newcastle) and live there 6 month + a day while spending most of the rest of the time in France.

We intend to keep this up until "no longer necessary".

In light of this thread it seems that my idea of just using our French registered car that we bought in early 2013 in both places may need revision.

Any thoughts?