Wow, you are a treasure trove of information! Thanks again.

It looks to me like they are trying to reduce the work load for the fonctionnaires (quel surprise!) for those folks who are only in France for a year or less. Used to be quite a bother to send short term folks to the préfecture for their cartes de séjour when they were only going to be staying six months. Half the time, they moved on before the cards were ready.

It also sounds like they've kind of gotten tired of this "contrat d'accueil et d'integration" stuff, too. More and more of the folks coming through say they were never asked to sign anything, and that they would actually like to get the free French lessons.

Guess we'll have to wait until Service-public updates their information on the website (I'm betting it won't be until after La Rentrée) to see what the details are. But the fees for the carte de séjour are pretty steep, last I heard. (I decided that, rather than renew my carte de residente, I was just going to take French nationality - much cheaper in the long run!)

But I will definitely be sending folks toward this thread to take advantage of the very useful links you've provided!
Cheers,
Bev

PS, I've also made this thread "sticky" - at least for a little while so it will catch people's attention when they are looking for information.