You were stopped on the way back from dinner in the Dordogne, or at a Saturday-night checkpoint outside Calais, and the gendarme is holding out a breathalyser. Your hands are shaking, your French deserts you, and one thought loops round your head: I had two glasses of wine, and in England that would have been fine. In France, it may not be. The French drink-drive limit is far lower than the English one, French police can take your licence away on the spot, and a conviction can mean a criminal record, a driving ban of several years and even prison. This guide explains, step by step and in plain English, what French police are allowed to do at the roadside, what happens to your licence in the days that follow, what the criminal court can impose, and exactly how to challenge each stage. Every key rule is quoted from the statute or the court decision that created it, because in a French traffic prosecution the paperwork matters as much as the driving. Read it now, before you need it, and if you have already been stopped, read Part II first and call a lawyer immediately: several of the deadlines below run in days, not weeks.

I. Stopped by French Police for Drink- or Drug-Driving: What Happens at the Roadside and to Your Licence

The first surprise for British drivers is the limit itself. In England and Wales you commit the offence above 80 milligrammes of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood, or 35 microgrammes per 100 millilitres of breath, as the official GOV.UK drink-drive limit table confirms. In France the general threshold is 0.50 gramme per litre of blood, or 0.25 milligramme per litre of breath, and the statute adds, word for word: “Une concentration d’alcool dans le sang égale ou supérieure à 0,50 gramme par litre ou par une concentration d’alcool dans l’air expiré égale ou supérieure à 0,25 milligramme par litre et inférieure aux seuils fixés à l’article L. 234-1, chez les autres conducteurs.” In other words, a level that is perfectly legal in Leeds is a punishable offence in Lyon. For new drivers, bus and coach drivers, and anyone whose licence is restricted to a car fitted with an alcohol interlock, the French limit drops to 0.20 gramme per litre of blood. Above 0.80 gramme per litre of blood, or 0.40 milligramme per litre of breath, you cross from the minor offence into the criminal offence of conduite sous l’empire d’un état alcoolique, driving under the influence of alcohol. And for drugs, France operates zero tolerance in practice: any detected use of a classified narcotic, shown by a blood or saliva analysis, is the offence, with no threshold to argue about.

A. The Breath Test, Blood Test or Saliva Screening: How French Police Prove Drink- or Drug-Driving, and Where the Proof Fails

French procedure works in two stages, and the distinction decides most cases. First comes the dépistage, the screening: at the roadside the officers ask you to blow into a handheld breath tester (éthylotest) or take a saliva swab. This screening only creates a presumption; it is not the proof. Then come the vérifications, the verification measurements: a second breath test on an approved fixed machine (the éthylomètre), a blood sample taken by a doctor (prise de sang), or a confirmatory saliva or blood analysis for drugs. Only the verification measurement can convict you. That is why the moments after the screening matter so much: ask, politely and in whatever French or English you can manage, what exactly you are being asked to do, and note the times. If you were stopped after an accident, the law requires the officers to carry out the tests; if you were stopped at random, the same two-stage logic applies.

The single most important decision you make at the roadside concerns drugs, not alcohol. When officers take a saliva sample for drug screening, they must ask you a specific question: do you wish to keep open the possibility of requesting a technical examination or expert assessment afterwards? If you answer yes, the officers must take a blood sample from you as soon as possible, so that a counter-analysis remains possible. The Court of Cassation, the highest criminal court in France, quashed a conviction in exactly this situation on 15 October 2024 (pourvoi no 24-80.611), holding, word for word: “Il résulte de ces textes qu’à la suite du prélèvement salivaire effectué par un officier ou agent de police judiciaire en vue d’établir si le conducteur d’un véhicule a fait usage de substances ou plantes classées comme stupéfiants, l’officier ou l’agent de police judiciaire demande au conducteur s’il souhaite se réserver la possibilité de demander un examen technique ou une expertise. Si la réponse est positive, il est procédé dans le plus court délai possible à un prélèvement sanguin.” In that case the driver had reserved his rights, no blood sample was taken, and the court concluded that his rights had been irreparably compromised: “La cassation est par conséquent encourue”, and it quashed the Versailles appeal court’s judgment of 21 December 2023 in all its provisions. The practical lesson is blunt: always say yes, always reserve the counter-expertise, and make sure your answer is written into the police report (procès-verbal).

The mirror image of that ruling is equally useful to understand. Drivers sometimes hope to get the case thrown out by attacking the screening kit itself: the brand, the serial number, the expiry date of the saliva test. The Court of Cassation closed that door on 12 March 2025 (pourvoi no 24-82.925), in a case where the Rennes appeal court had acquitted a driver precisely because the file said nothing about the kit. The criminal chamber quashed the acquittal, holding, word for word: “Il résulte de ces textes que les épreuves de dépistage réalisées aux fins de rechercher si le conducteur d’un véhicule a fait usage de stupéfiants ont pour seul objet d’établir une présomption d’usage de stupéfiants, et d’autoriser, au cas où elles s’avèrent positives, l’agent ou l’officier de police judiciaire à procéder à des vérifications, sous forme de prélèvements, dont l’analyse pourra permettre d’établir l’infraction.” And it added, again word for word: “les officiers ou agents de police judiciaire qui procèdent à une épreuve de dépistage ne sont pas tenus de justifier de la fiabilité du test, de sa validité, ou des conditions dans lesquelles le dépistage a été pratiqué.” Do not waste your defence on the screening kit. Attack the verification instead: the calibration and approval of the éthylomètre, the interval between the two blows, the conditions of the blood draw, the chain of custody of the samples, and whether you were told of your right to a counter-analysis. Those are the points where real cases are won.

One warning must be stated plainly. Refusing to blow, to give blood or to provide the saliva sample does not make the problem go away; it creates a separate criminal offence. The statute provides, word for word: “Le fait de refuser de se soumettre aux vérifications prévues par les articles L. 234-4 à L. 234-6 ou aux vérifications prévues par l’article L. 234-9 est puni de trois ans d’emprisonnement et de 9 000 euros d’amende.” Refusal carries the same headline penalty as the drink-driving offence itself, plus its own set of additional penalties including suspension or cancellation of the licence. Unless a doctor certifies that a blood draw is medically impossible, refusal is almost always the worse option. Submit to the test, reserve every right, and fight on the paperwork.

B. Your Licence Taken on the Spot: Immediate Retention and the Prefect’s Suspension, Deadlines and How to Get It Back

If the screening or the officers’ observations suggest drink- or drug-driving, the police keep your licence there and then. This is the rétention immédiate, the immediate retention of the driving licence as a precaution. You are given a receipt, an avis de rétention, which for a short period serves as your only proof of the right to drive, and in drink or drugs cases it generally authorises no driving at all. Do not drive on it unless a lawyer has confirmed in writing that your receipt allows it. From that moment a strict clock starts running against the préfet, the State’s representative in the département, the senior official who runs the local administration. The statute gives the prefect seventy-two hours from the retention to decide, extended to one hundred and twenty hours where laboratory analyses were needed, and the rule is unforgiving: “A défaut de décision de suspension dans le délai prévu au premier alinéa des I A et I du présent article, le permis de conduire est remis à la disposition de l’intéressé”, meaning that if no suspension order is issued in time, your licence must be put back at your disposal. Count the hours from the exact time on your receipt, and if the deadline passes with no order, go and reclaim your licence with proof of the dates. That single sentence has restored the driving rights of countless motorists whose files simply moved too slowly.

When the prefect does decide in time, the order is the suspension administrative, also called the prefectural suspension. The same statute caps it precisely: “La durée de la suspension du permis de conduire ne peut excéder six mois.” The duration can be extended to one year, and the statute lists exactly when: “Cette durée peut être portée à un an en cas d’accident de la circulation ayant entraîné la mort d’une personne ou ayant occasionné un dommage corporel, de refus d’obtempérer commis dans les conditions prévues à l’article L. 233-1-1, de conduite sous l’empire d’un état alcoolique, de conduite après usage de substances ou plantes classées comme stupéfiants et de refus de se soumettre aux épreuves de vérification prévues aux articles L. 234-4 à L. 234-6 et L. 235-2.” Drink-driving, drug-driving and refusal therefore sit in the category that can cost you a full year off the road before any court has even heard the case. The prefect can also act later, on the file alone, without a roadside retention: seized of a police report recording an offence punishable by suspension, “le représentant de l’Etat dans le département où cette infraction a été commise peut, s’il n’estime pas devoir procéder au classement, prononcer à titre provisoire soit un avertissement, soit la suspension du permis de conduire”. A warning (avertissement) instead of a suspension is possible at this stage, and a well-argued file, first offence, modest reading, professional need for the car, treatment already undertaken, can genuinely make the difference between the two.

British drivers face two extra complications here. First, many still drive in France on a UK photocard licence. If you have lived in France and exchanged it, the French points system applies to you in full, and the deductions described below bite directly. If you still hold a British licence, the French suspension still forbids you from driving on French territory for its whole duration; the order is recorded against you in France, and getting caught behind the wheel during the ban creates a fresh prosecution. Our companion guide on the one-year rule and the exchange of UK licences after Brexit explains which document you should be driving on. Second, the language barrier slows everything down: the retention receipt, the prefect’s order and the summons arrive in French, and the deadlines run from notification whether you understood the letter or not. Photograph every document the same day, get it translated urgently, and diary the seventy-two-hour and one-hundred-and-twenty-hour marks yourself rather than trusting the administration to count them for you.

How do you fight the administrative suspension? Three routes exist, and they can be combined. First, check the deadline: no order within seventy-two hours, or one hundred and twenty where analyses were required, means the licence must be returned, as quoted above. Second, write to the prefect immediately with evidence, asking for a warning or a shortened suspension rather than the maximum; attach proof of employment, family responsibilities, enrolment in an awareness course, and any flaw in the file. Third, challenge the order before the administrative court (tribunal administratif), asking the emergency judge for suspension of the order while the case is examined. An administrative appeal does not automatically pause the ban, so the emergency application is the point of the exercise. Keep copies of everything, send everything by registered letter or the official online channel, and never assume a phone call to the préfecture has any legal effect. None of this affects the criminal case that follows; the administrative suspension and the court’s sentence run on separate tracks, and beating one does not automatically beat the other.

II. Before the French Criminal Court for Drink- or Drug-Driving: Penalties and How to Challenge Them

The criminal case is heard by the tribunal correctionnel, the court that tries mid-level criminal offences (délits). Three procedural routes can bring you there, and identifying yours is the first job. The ordonnance pénale is a simplified procedure where the judge decides on the file without a hearing; the comparution sur reconnaissance préalable de culpabilité, known as CRPC, is the French guilty-plea deal, where you admit the facts in exchange for a proposed sentence approved by a judge; and the comparution immédiate is the fast-track trial, where you can be tried within days of the arrest. The route chosen tells you how serious the prosecutor considers the case and how fast you must react. If you were kept in police custody (garde à vue) after the stop, our guide on being arrested and held in custody in France after Brexit covers your interpreter, your lawyer and the custody deadlines that apply that same night.

A. Guilty-Plea Deal, Penal Order or Immediate Trial: Which Procedure You Face and What Sentence It Can Impose

Start with the scale of what the court can do, because British drivers routinely underestimate it. For the mid-range alcohol band, between 0.50 and 0.80 gramme per litre of blood, the offence is a fourth-class minor offence (contravention), but it is not trivial: the statute provides that “Cette contravention donne lieu de plein droit à la réduction de six points du permis de conduire”, six points off, plus a possible suspension of up to three years and a possible obligation to drive only a car fitted with an alcohol interlock (éthylotest anti-démarrage, the EAD device that prevents the engine starting after a positive breath test). At or above 0.80 gramme per litre of blood, or 0.40 milligramme per litre of breath, you face the full criminal offence, and the statute states, word for word: “Même en l’absence de tout signe d’ivresse manifeste, le fait de conduire un véhicule sous l’empire d’un état alcoolique caractérisé par une concentration d’alcool dans le sang égale ou supérieure à 0,80 gramme par litre ou par une concentration d’alcool dans l’air expiré égale ou supérieure à 0,40 milligramme par litre est puni de trois ans d’emprisonnement et de 9 000 euros d’amende.” No visible drunkenness is required; the number alone convicts. The same provision adds that the offence automatically halves your maximum points balance: “Ce délit donne lieu de plein droit à la réduction de la moitié du nombre maximal de points du permis de conduire.”

For drugs the penalties mirror the alcohol offence and then go further. The statute provides, word for word: “Toute personne qui conduit un véhicule ou qui accompagne un élève conducteur alors qu’il résulte d’une analyse sanguine ou salivaire qu’elle a fait usage de substances ou plantes classées comme stupéfiants est punie de trois ans d’emprisonnement et de 9 000 euros d’amende.” Where drink and drugs are combined, the text raises the stakes explicitly: “Si la personne se trouvait également sous l’empire d’un état alcoolique caractérisé par une concentration d’alcool dans le sang ou dans l’air expiré égale ou supérieure aux taux fixés par les dispositions législatives ou réglementaires du présent code, les peines sont portées à cinq ans d’emprisonnement et 15 000 euros d’amende.” On top of the fine and the possible prison term, the court can impose suspension of the licence for up to five years, cancellation of the licence with a ban on reapplying for up to five years, community service, day-fines, confiscation of the vehicle, and compulsory awareness courses on road safety and on drugs, all at your expense. The official English-language service-public page on driving under the influence of drugs confirms the headline figures of three years and 9,000 euros, rising to five years and 15,000 euros where alcohol is mixed in, with six points withdrawn, or nine where both are involved. Compare that with England, where a first drink-driving conviction typically means a minimum twelve-month ban and up to six months in prison: the French regime is harsher on paper, and it applies to you the moment your wheels turn on a French road.

Each procedure demands a different response. Under the ordonnance pénale you receive the judge’s order by registered letter, and the clock for challenging it starts on notification. The statute states, word for word: “Le prévenu est informé qu’il dispose d’un délai de quarante-cinq jours à compter de cette notification pour former opposition à l’ordonnance”, forty-five days to file an opposition, which sends the case to a full hearing. Do not let that letter sit unopened; the forty-five days run whether or not you have found a lawyer. Under the CRPC guilty-plea procedure, you appear with a lawyer, the prosecutor proposes a sentence, and a judge approves or rejects it; you have a short reflection period, and you can refuse the deal, which sends the case to ordinary trial. Under comparution immédiate, you are brought before the court within days: the prosecutor formally records your identity, notifies the charges and their legal classification, and, crucially for a British defendant, the statute requires that “Après avoir, s’il y a lieu, informé la personne de son droit d’être assistée par un interprète”, you must be told of your right to an interpreter, and then that “le procureur de la République l’informe qu’elle a le droit à l’assistance d’un avocat de son choix ou commis d’office”, you have the right to a lawyer of your choice or one appointed for you. You may ask for time to prepare your defence, and the court must grant a delay of at least two weeks if you request it; first appearances under pressure, in a second language, are where unrepresented defendants accept penalties they could have reduced.

B. How to Challenge the Conviction and the Ban: Opposition, Appeal, Procedural Defects and Getting Your Licence Back

Challenges fall into four families, and a good defence usually combines at least two. First, the opposition against an ordonnance pénale: forty-five days from notification, as quoted above, to obtain a full public hearing where the evidence is debated afresh. File it as soon as the order arrives even if you are still choosing a lawyer; it preserves everything and costs nothing. Second, the appel, the appeal against a tribunal correctionnel judgment: ten days from the judgment if you were present or represented, running from service if you were absent. The appeal re-examines the whole case, facts and sentence, before the cour d’appel, and it suspends the prison term and the fine while it is pending, though the licence suspension ordered by the court may continue to apply. Third, the pourvoi en cassation against the appeal judgment: two months, limited to points of law, the route by which the two rulings quoted in this guide were won.

Fourth, and often decisive, come the nullités, the procedural defects that can annul the tests or the whole prosecution. French criminal procedure treats the verification measurements as formal acts, and formalism cuts both ways. The two Court of Cassation rulings in Part I map the battlefield exactly: demand the impossible, attacking the reliability of the screening kit, and you will lose, because screening only founds a presumption; demand what the law promises, the blood sample after you reserved a counter-expertise, the calibrated and approved éthylomètre, the second breath analysis, the note of your rights in the report, and a missing step can destroy the prosecution’s proof. Other classic defects include the absence of the mandatory notices in the police report, measurements taken outside the legal conditions, samples analysed by an unapproved laboratory, and significant unsigned corrections to the report. Each defect must be raised before any defence on the merits, at the very start of the hearing, or it is lost; tell your lawyer about every anomaly the week before the trial, not on the morning of it.

Alongside the fight against the conviction runs the fight for the licence itself. The prefectural suspension can be shortened or lifted where the criminal case collapses: an acquittal, a successful opposition, or proof that the verification was void can support an application to the prefect or the administrative court to revisit the ban. Where the court itself imposed the suspension or cancellation, ask the sentencing judge for every reduction the law allows in your band: a suspension limited in duration rather than the maximum, permission structured around the interlock device (EAD) so you can keep working, and the awareness courses completed early to show the court you have acted. After cancellation, the path back runs through the medical examination, the psychological tests and the full re-examination of the licence, with a minimum waiting period set by the judgment; start the medical process the day the judgment becomes final rather than the day you feel like driving again. And throughout, keep one file, in date order, with the retention receipt, the prefect’s order, the summons, the analysis slips and every letter: French traffic law rewards the organised defendant, because almost every remedy in this guide turns on a date, a time or a missing signature.

Conclusion

A French drink- or drug-driving stop moves faster than anything British drivers know from home: the licence can be gone within the hour, the prefect decides within days, and the criminal file follows within weeks. But speed creates fragility, and fragility creates defences. The lower French limits mean you should treat one glass as the practical maximum before driving, and treat any stop as the start of a formal procedure, not a roadside chat. At the scene, submit to the verifications, reserve the counter-expertise out loud, note the exact times, and photograph every document. In the days after, count the prefect’s seventy-two or one-hundred-and-twenty hours yourself, challenge the administrative suspension without delay, and diary the forty-five days for opposition and the ten days for appeal. Before the court, attack the verification measurements rather than the screening, raise every procedural defect first, and use the interlock, the courses and your personal circumstances to pull the sentence down from the maximums this guide has quoted. The statutes and the two Court of Cassation rulings cited above are recent, published and binding; a defence built on them, raised on time and in the right order, is how British drivers in France turn a disastrous evening into a manageable file. If that evening has already happened to you, do not wait for the letters to arrive: get advice now, in English, from a lawyer who reads the police report the way the court will.

Need a quick opinion on your case

If you have been stopped, suspended or summonsed for drink- or drug-driving in France, a telephone consultation with a lawyer of the firm within 48 hours can clarify your deadlines and your defences before anything expires. Call +33 6 46 60 58 22 (Maître Reda Kohen) or write via our contact page, briefly describing the date of the stop, the test result and any letter already received. Early advice is what preserves the challenges described above.