If someone was born to foreigners in France in 1958, lived there until 1962, and had a French birth certificate, would they be a French citizen?

Question

Before the 1993 Méhaignerie Law, I'm not sure how this would work.

Answer 1

France never had a pure ius soli. Being born in France is not enough in and of itself to be a French citizen.

Being born to foreign parents, someone would only be French from birth if one of their parents was born in France (initially only if their father was born in France and since 1927 either the father or the mother). This is the so-called “double droit du sol” or double ius soli. This is now controlled by article 19-3 of the Code civil but the rule has existed since 1889.

There is no indication that it applies here but the birth certificate would tell you that (that was the point of the double ius soli when it was enacted: even for people who may or may not be French by descent, it's extremely easy to prove they are born to parents born in France, whether they like it or not).

Otherwise, you could become French, at your majority, under various conditions. The details for this procedure is one of the things that changed in 1993 and then again in 1998 and 2007 but those changes are not relevant here as residing in France in your teenage years has always been a requirement since this rule was created in 1945 (article 44 of the Code de la nationalité française and later article 21-11 of the Code civil). So someone born in France to foreign parents and who left France at the age of four would never have been French, under any version of the law during the last couple of centuries (before that, nationality is a very different notion anyway).

Answer 2

This would require to speak with a French lawyer. Normally laws in France are not retroactive: if your case dates from before a law was passed (like, in your case, the Méhaignerie law of 1993), the previous law applies. So, logically, you'd fall under the 1945 law (modified in 1973, but that wouldn't apply to you). Where it says that you're French from your birth if you're born in France with at least one French parent, and from the time you become an adult (21 back then) if both parents are foreigners.

So that was the law then. Only a lawyer will really know whether you can use this, or whether the Loi Méhaignerie applies to everybody, regardless of the year of birth. My bet is on the changes applying only to births after the law was passed, but IANAL...