"New" French driving licences?

[snoezig]

I've been reading through this thread and remember someone saying that the French driving licence is valid for life. I have heard rumours floating around that this will no longer be the case.

I heard that all the old French licences must be replaced by a new French licence with a chip by 2033. The new French licence will be in card format, just like other EU driving licences. Anyone who obtains a French licence after January 2013 will receive the new 15-year licence with a chip. The new licence will have a fee, of course, which will need to be repaid every 15 years upon renewal.

Anybody know if this is true?

If this change has been/will be implemented , then I am thinking of finally exchanging my British licence to get the French licence, which, according to my sources, will be valid until 2033. Does anybody know how much the new French licence will cost? Also, I know that the old French licence doesn't have a chip while my British one does. Do you think having a licence without a chip will give me problems when travelling to other countries (considering that my unchipped passport gives me so many problems)?

[Bevdeforges]

Moved you out into a thread of your own, since it's an interesting topic.

I've heard rumblings about these new driving licenses, but so far have not heard of a firm implementation date and certainly no firm price for them yet.
Cheers,
Bev

[jenx]

Hi Snoezig,

Wow, France might finally be getting with the program and getting rid of those awful fold-up paper things? Great news!

Should you swap over your Brit license to a French one even now, you shouldn't have any issues while travelling OS. My husband has used his awful fold-up pink license in Canada, US, Australia, Georgia and all over Europe without any issue whatsoever. And he's been pulled over a few times by police (nothing too illegal most of the time) who've said nothing about his fairly dog-eared-looking license...

It's good news if they're thinking about bringing in renewable licenses - I'm surprised he never had a problem with his license, not only due to the state of it, as he's a little chubby sixteen year old with big round specs in his picture - NOTHING at all like what he looks like today 12 years on.

My passport is also unchipped (only two years of validity left so I'll have to changeover to a chipped version soon) and I've never had a single issue with it. Having said that, I've only been through British customs 6 times in my life and while I haven't heard any issues personally, I've heard through friends' horror experiences that they like to make things difficult there sometimes.

Will be interested to hear more about these new licenses! Great news!

[jenx]

Just found on: Obtention du permis de conduire - Service-public.fr

Nouveaux permis de conduire à partir de 2013 - 14.11.2011
Le décret n° 2011-1475 du 9 novembre 2011 transposant la directive 2006/126/CE prévoit de nouvelles règles applicables au permis de conduire et relatives à sa forme, sa durée de validité, ses différentes catégories (principalement pour la conduite des véhicules à 2 roues).
Il prévoit également un accès progressif des conducteurs à certains véhicules du fait de leur puissance en modifiant les conditions d'âge et en prenant en compte l'expérience de ces conducteurs.
Ce texte ne s'appliquera qu'à partir du 19 janvier 2013.

Detailing there'll be changes to the licensing, not specifically to the "chip" and credit card format, but we can guess.

But more specifically, this article is very promising: http://lci.tf1.fr/france/societe/les...e-6253013.html