A French service for streamlining bureaucratic processes - really!

The online change of address service

Sample National Identity Card, France

It’s one of those lasting stereotypes of life in France—coping with French bureaucracy. French residents and citizens complain about it, and it’s a commonplace among writers in the why-not-move-to-France cottage industry.

But the Administration française actually provides an online tool to make one of the routine nuisances of managing bureaucratic tasks easier: changing one’s address, whether moving within the country, or moving to a location beyond its borders. It’s called the Changement d'adresse en ligne, or simply the “Online Change of Address” service.

The online tool allows one to change one’s address (and in many cases one’s phone number and/or email address) with a number of public- and private-sector services:

• energy suppliers (EDF, Engie, ENERCOOP);

• France Travail (the French national employment bureau);

• social security agencies: health insurance (including CPAM, the national health insurance provider), family allowance and retirement funds;

• Service des Impôts (French tax authority);

• the SIV, the service responsible for motor vehicle registration.

The service is available to all bona fide residents of France, not just French citizens.

To use the service you’ll need to login using either your local credentials for ServicePublic.fr or the FranceConnect authentication service. The site will then guide you through the process, consisting of verifying personal information, submitting details on changes to be made, identifying the services where you wish the changes to be made, indicating the date the changes go into effect, and finally a page that verifies all changes indicated prior to submission.

Then you’re done!

There might be those who assert that the invention of a service to mitigate time spent on bureaucratic functions is really just a testimonial to the oppressiveness of French bureaucracy. But the next time, as a French resident, you move and lurch from one corporate or government website to another to change your address or contact details, pause for a moment and think about how it might not have to be that way. It seems that somebody in the Administration française had that thought, too.