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I am a dual UK / Irish citizen currently living in the UK. I am close to retirement age. I am considering spending a considerable period travelling around the EU. Some parts of this plan would be easier if I had an official EU address e.g. buying and registering a car.

Can I easily take up official residence at a friend's house in France? Would I need to spend a significant amount of time there or could I set off on my travels quite promptly?

Note that I am only interested in fully legal solutions not the you'll get away with it variety.

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Can I easily take up official residence at a friend's house in France? Would I need to spend a significant amount of time there or could I set off on my travels quite promptly?

Note that I am only interested in fully legal solutions not the you'll get away with it variety.

There may be some small issues with health insurance but it's quite easy. The thing is that being a resident entails spending a significant amount of time. As an EU citizen, you are entitled to live in France, “being a resident” and getting a card confirming your status stems from that, not the other way around.

That's especially true in France where there is no concept of mandatory registration or official address like you might find in Central European countries. Residence is a set of material facts, nothing else (and, in fact, the definitions can differ between different areas of the law, say tax law vs. citizenship).

For example, I don't think a residence card is necessary to register your car in France (third-country nationals may have to prove that they are staying legally) but you will need a recent “preuve de domicile” (proof of address). Typically, that would be some utility bill but since you presumably won't have any, you will need your friend to sign something to the effect that you are living with them. Can they do that truthfully?

So I have trouble even figuring out what your question could mean besides “Will I get away with holding a French residence card, filing for taxes in France, or getting insurance in France while not being a resident?” It's easy to set up residence in France but if you do not reside in France, you do not reside in France.

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  • Would I be living with them? That's tricky and probably a matter of opinion. The idea is to be primarily nomadic for 6 to 12 months. I'd be living with them as much as anyone. It would be my starting point, ending point, and occasional stopover. I could be contacted through them, they would know where I was.
    – badjohn
    Commented Oct 7, 2022 at 9:31
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Traveling on your Irish passport, you have freedom of movement. You can enter into a formal rental agreement to qualify as resident at any address in the EU. Whatever the local equivalent of "lodger" status in the UK may be, so you can pay a peppercorn rent to your friend. Add a local health insurance policy and any local requirement to register permanent residency (can be onorous in some EU countries like Germany) and open a bank account, preferably with direct debit in the UK feeding it a monthly sum so you are maintaining an active account. You then use that address as necessary on all official correspondence as your postal address and place of residency in the EU and use your local bank account to pay all bills and overheads. The difficulties will begin if you no longer have a UK home address and are out of the country more than three months.

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  • Thank you. The peppercorn rent idea could work well as the friend has a large country property and already runs B&B / chambre d’hôte so it should not be onerous for them. I won't lose my UK home. I'll still be a co-owner and other family members will be in it.
    – badjohn
    Commented Oct 25, 2022 at 10:36
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    (-1) This “peppercorn rent“ doesn't really solve any problem, at least as far as French law is concerned. I can see how that could help in very bureaucratic countries like Germany or the Netherlands but you don't need to pay rent to qualify for anything, that's not how residence work in France. @badjohn could do everything you describe based on a letter from his friends attesting that they are hosting him. Conversely, paying for a holiday home (real rent or even buying outrigt) doesn't make you a resident for any purpose so that's still firmly in “getting away with it” territory.
    – Relaxed
    Commented Oct 27, 2022 at 11:17
  • @Relaxed Thanks for the extra information.
    – badjohn
    Commented Oct 27, 2022 at 11:20

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