Every December the same question lands on the desks of French lawyers with British clients: my parents are coming from Manchester for Christmas, my sister wants to stay until Easter, what papers do they actually need? Since Brexit, the answer is no longer nothing. Your relatives from the United Kingdom are third-country nationals, which is the European term for citizens of a country outside the European Union, the European Economic Area and Switzerland. That single change means a family visit to France now sits on three legal pillars: an accommodation certificate signed by you and validated by the town hall, the 90-day visa-free ceiling that caps the whole trip, and a set of refusal and removal decisions that can be challenged before the French courts. This article explains each pillar in practical order. French legal terms are explained at first use. The reader is assumed to be a British citizen settled in France who receives visits from British relatives living in the United Kingdom.
I. Preparing a Family Visit That Survives the Town Hall and the Border
The two controls your family will meet are different, and they must be prepared in the right order. The first control happens in France before anyone travels: the attestation d’accueil, the welcome invitation, must be validated by the mayor of your commune. The second happens at the French border when your relatives arrive: officers check that the short stay is genuine, funded and covered by insurance, within the 90-day limit. A visit fails most often because the two controls are confused, typically when the attestation is requested too late, sent as a photocopy, or treated as a visa in itself.
A. The Attestation d’Accueil Your Relatives Cannot Travel Without
The starting point is the statute. Article L. 313-1 of the Code de l’entrée et du séjour des étrangers et du droit d’asile, the French Code on the entry and residence of foreign nationals, provides: “Tout étranger qui déclare vouloir séjourner en France pour une durée n’excédant pas trois mois dans le cadre d’une visite familiale ou privée doit présenter un justificatif d’hébergement qui prend la forme d’une attestation d’accueil, signée par la personne qui se propose d’assurer le logement de l’étranger, ou son représentant légal.” In plain terms, any British relative coming for a family stay of under three months needs an accommodation document signed by the person who will house them, which is you, and that document must then be validated by the administration. The validated attestation is, in the words of the same article, the document required by the Schengen Convention of 19 June 1990 for a family or private visit, so it is recognised at every Schengen border post, not only the French one.
The validation step belongs to the mayor, and the procedure is deliberately local. Article L. 313-2 of the same Code states: “L’attestation d’accueil, signée par l’hébergeant et accompagnée des pièces justificatives déterminées par décret en Conseil d’Etat, est présentée pour validation au maire de la commune du lieu d’hébergement ou, à Paris, Lyon et Marseille, au maire d’arrondissement, agissant en qualité d’agent de l’Etat.” If you live in Paris, you therefore apply at the mairie of your arrondissement rather than a central office; in Lyon and Marseille the same arrondissement rule applies. The mayor acts here as an agent of the State, not as a local politician, which is why the decision can later be challenged before the administrative courts. The article adds that the attestation carries your undertaking to pay your guests’ living costs if they cannot, limited to the means-of-subsistence figure normally required at the border. Sign only what your finances support: that undertaking is enforceable, and the consulate will test it against your income when it examines the visa or entry file.
In practice the file you hand to the mairie contains your identity document, proof that you own, rent or occupy the flat or house, recent utility bills or rent receipts, evidence of your income such as three recent pay slips and your last French tax notice, and the passport numbers of each visitor, which are written on the form the mairie gives you. If you are yourself a foreign national, bring your residence permit instead of a French identity card. The official checklist, kept updated by the Prime Minister’s legal information service, is the service-public.fr page on the attestation d’accueil; work from that page rather than from forwarding agents’ summaries, because the list of supporting documents depends on your nationality and changes over time. Two points cause most rejections at the counter: the passport numbers must be exact, and the accommodation evidence must show that each guest can be housed in normal conditions of surface area, safety, sanitation and comfort. A one-bedroom flat presented as sleeping six people invites a refusal.
Validation is not free of charge. Article L. 313-6 of the Code provides: “Chaque demande de validation d’une attestation d’accueil donne lieu à la perception d’une taxe d’un montant de 30 euros acquittée par l’hébergeant, recouvrée comme en matière de droit de timbre.” The 30-euro tax stamp is paid by you, the host, for each validation request, and the service-public.fr guidance confirms that the tax stays due even if the mayor ultimately refuses; it is not refunded. Buy the stamp online before queuing, because a file without the stamp cannot be registered, and keep the receipt: if the attestation is later lost, a fresh application means fresh stamps.
Insurance is the second pillar of the file. Article L. 313-7 of the Code provides: “Pour les séjours visés par la présente section, l’obligation d’assurance prévue au 2° de l’article L. 311-1 peut être satisfaite par une assurance ayant la même portée souscrite au profit de l’étranger par la personne qui se propose de l’héberger.” You may therefore take out the medical and hospital cover on your guests’ behalf, and doing so often strengthens the file, because officers see a host who has organised the stay rather than a visitor who may become a charge on the French health system. The cover must extend to hospital and emergency costs and to repatriation for medical reasons, matching what the border code requires of the traveller personally. Keep the certificate in English and French if the insurer offers both versions; border officers work in French, and a bilingual page shortens every discussion.
Two refinements matter for British families in particular. First, exemptions exist but are narrow. Article L. 313-8 of the Code leaves it to a Conseil d’Etat decree to define the cases in which a traveller may be dispensed from the accommodation proof, including stays of a humanitarian nature or cultural exchanges, urgent medical travel, and funerals or the serious illness of a close relative. A British son rushing to a parent’s hospital bedside may therefore qualify for a lighter regime, but the exemption is applied case by case and never assumed: check with the consulate before travelling without the attestation. Second, the files are kept. Article L. 313-5 of the Code authorises the mairies to memorise validation requests in an automated file to combat misuse of the procedure, under conditions set by decree after the opinion of the data-protection authority. Repeated invitations that end in overstays are therefore visible to the administration the next time you apply, which is one more reason to keep every visit inside the legal duration.
Timing is practical rather than legal, but it decides outcomes. Request the attestation several weeks before the visit, because the mairie may order a home verification, and send the validated original to the United Kingdom before departure: the British government’s travel advice for France states that the French resident hosting you must obtain the attestation from the local mayor’s office and send the original before you enter France, as published on the France entry-requirements page. A scan on a telephone is not the document the Convention requires. For Christmas travel, start in October; for a summer stay, start in spring. Our companion article on renewing a Withdrawal Agreement residence permit and travelling on an expired card explains the mirror situation, where the British traveller is the resident and the card itself is the document under discussion.
B. The 90-Day Ceiling and the Questions Asked at the French Border
British visitors do not need a visa for short stays, but visa-free is not condition-free. The general entry conditions sit in Article L. 311-1 of the Code, whose second paragraph requires, among other documents, “du justificatif d’hébergement prévu à l’article L. 313-1”, together with “des autres documents prévus par décret en Conseil d’Etat relatifs à l’objet et aux conditions de son séjour et à ses moyens d’existence”. Your relatives must therefore carry the validated attestation, proof of the purpose and conditions of the stay, proof of sufficient means of subsistence, and the medical insurance certificate discussed above, plus a return or onward ticket. The British government’s France travel advice lists exactly these four checks at French border control: travel insurance, enough money, proof of accommodation, and a return or onward ticket. Brief your family before they fly: the person who packed the attestation in the hold luggage instead of the hand luggage has already lost the argument.
The ceiling itself is European. For a stay planned on the territory of the Member States of a duration not exceeding 90 days in any 180-day period, the Schengen Borders Code requires third-country nationals to justify the purpose and conditions of the visit and to hold sufficient means of subsistence. The administrative courts apply this daily: in a visa judgment the Nantes appeal court recalled the wording “Pour un séjour prévu sur le territoire des Etats membres, d’une durée n’excédant pas 90 jours sur toute période de 180 jours”, before checking means and purpose document by document (CAA Nantes, 22 October 2021, No 20NT02528). Two consequences follow for a British family. First, the 90 days are counted across the whole Schengen area and across the 180 days before each entry, so a fortnight in Spain at Easter eats into a Christmas stay in France; days spent in Ireland do not count, because Ireland is outside Schengen, but days in France, Spain, Italy or Greece all draw from the same pot. Second, time spent in France under a residence permit or long-stay visa does not count towards the 90 days, which matters when a British child studying in France on a student permit hosts visiting grandparents: the student’s own stay is covered by the permit, while the grandparents consume their visa-free days.
At Paris airports the check is operated by the border police, and the new European Entry/Exit System now records fingerprints, a photograph and the dates of entry and exit for third-country nationals. The practical effect is that overstays are no longer a matter of stamps a traveller might misread: the system computes them. Tell relatives to keep boarding passes and to verify that their exit was recorded, especially when leaving through a smaller airport or by Eurotunnel where queues can push travellers towards inattention. If a relative cannot leave before the limit expires because of a hospital admission or a cancelled ferry, the instruction published on the British government’s travel advice page is to contact the nearest prefecture in France, and for Paris that means the prefecture de police. Go early, with passports, the attestation, insurance and proof of the event preventing departure, and keep every receipt. A documented approach to the administration before the limit expires is weighed very differently from an overstay discovered afterwards.
Second homes deserve a short aside, because many British families mix a hosted stay with a week in their own French house. Owners should carry proof of ownership or tenancy, such as a French property-tax bill or a utility bill, alongside the attestation covering the hosted part of the trip. The two documents answer two different questions, where the family sleeps each night and why the trip ends, and producing both at once shortens the interview. Where the plan exceeds 90 days from the start, for example a grandparent minding children for a school term, do not stretch the visa-free stay: apply for a long-stay visitor visa before leaving the United Kingdom, with accommodation, income and insurance evidence for the whole period. The consulate route is slower but it is the only lawful way to spend an autumn in France.
II. Refusals, Overstays and the Remedies That Actually Work
Refusals come in two shapes, and each has its own appeal path. The mayor may refuse to validate the attestation; the consulate, or the review commission behind it, may refuse the visa where one is needed. Overstays create a third situation, where the administration orders the traveller to leave. The three paths share one feature: French judges review them for concrete evidence, and files win or lose on documents, not on family feeling. The cases below, both decided by the Nantes appeal court in visa matters, show exactly what evidence the judges look for.
A. Challenging the Mayor’s Refusal and the Consulate’s Refusal
Start with the mayor. Article L. 313-3 of the Code provides: “Le maire peut refuser de valider l’attestation d’accueil dans les cas suivants”, followed by four cases. The most litigated is the second: “2° Il ressort, soit de la teneur de l’attestation et des pièces justificatives présentées, soit de la vérification effectuée au domicile de l’hébergeant, que l’étranger ne peut être accueilli dans des conditions normales de logement”. The other three are the inability to produce the required supporting documents, inaccurate statements on the form, and earlier attestations revealing misuse of the procedure, if necessary after an enquiry requested from the police or gendarmerie. A refusal grounded on housing conditions must therefore rest on something checkable: the file, or a home visit. And the visit has rules. Article L. 313-4 of the Code provides that the visiting officers “ne peuvent pénétrer chez l’hébergeant qu’après s’être assurés du consentement, donné par écrit, de celui-ci”, and adds: “En cas de refus, les conditions normales de logement sont réputées non remplies.” Refuse entry and the law deems the housing condition failed; accept the visit and the officers must record what they actually saw. Either way, ask for a copy of the visit report: it is the document the prefect and later the judge will read.
The remedy against the mayor’s refusal runs through the prefect first. The service-public.fr guidance states that a hierarchical appeal, the recours hiérarchique, lies to the prefect within two months of the mayor’s refusal, and that the prefect may either validate the attestation or reject the appeal; silence from the prefect for one month counts as an implicit rejection, and a court action before the administrative court is available only after that hierarchical step, as detailed on the attestation d’accueil page. Treat those two months as the hard spine of your calendar: the appeal letter should attach everything the mayor found missing, corrected and completed, plus the visit report if one exists, because the prefect re-examines the file in full rather than reviewing the mayor’s reasoning from a distance. If the prefect rejects expressly or stays silent for a month, the next step is the administrative court, and the general rule of administrative litigation is that Article R. 421-1 of the Code of Administrative Justice provides: “La juridiction ne peut être saisie que par voie de recours formé contre une décision, et ce, dans les deux mois à partir de la notification ou de la publication de la décision attaquée.” Diarise that two-month limit from the prefect’s decision, ask for interim relief if Christmas travel is at stake, and never let the file go to court with the same gaps that caused the mayor’s refusal.
Visa refusals follow the consular track, and here the case law is directly instructive for British hosts to understand what consulates look for. In the first Nantes case, the review commission had refused a short-stay visa on three cumulative grounds: the applicant’s own resources were insufficient to fund the stay and the return, the host’s means were insufficient to support an extra person for the whole stay, and there was a risk that the visa would be misused, the commission noting that the applicant had previously misused a Spanish short-stay visa by enrolling her son in school in France (CAA Nantes, 22 October 2021, No 20NT02528). The court then stated the governing principle in terms British sponsors should memorise: “L’administration peut, indépendamment d’autres motifs de rejet tels que la menace pour l’ordre public, refuser la délivrance d’un visa, qu’il soit de court ou de long séjour, en cas de risque avéré de détournement de son objet, lorsqu’elle établit que le motif indiqué dans la demande ne correspond manifestement pas à la finalité réelle du séjour de l’étranger en France. Elle peut à ce titre opposer un refus à une demande de visa de court séjour en se fondant sur l’existence d’un risque avéré de détournement du visa à des fins migratoires.” A family invitation therefore helps only when the rest of the file is coherent: credible return ties, consistent statements, and a history without misuse.
The same judgment explains how a host’s undertaking is weighed. The court recalled that obtaining a short-stay visa requires the applicant to show both the ability to return home and sufficient means for the stay, and continued: “Il appartient au demandeur de visa dont les ressources personnelles ne lui assurent pas ces moyens d’apporter la preuve de ce que les ressources de la personne qui l’héberge et qui s’est engagée à prendre en charge ses frais de séjour au cas où il n’y pourvoirait pas sont suffisantes pour ce faire.” (CAA Nantes, 22 October 2021, No 20NT02528) Where your own resources are modest, the validated attestation with its maintenance undertaking can carry the file, but only if your income evidence genuinely covers an extra person for the whole stay. In that case the applicant, a retired divorcee receiving a pension of 53,237 Algerian dinars, about 326 euros a month, could not show sufficient personal means, and the court upheld the refusal. Three years later the same court applied the same test to another family-visit file and again rejected the appeal, noting that the decision was founded on a risk of misuse of the visa for migration purposes, since the applicant showed no sufficient guarantee of return to Guinea, where she established no economic or material interests (CAA Nantes, 15 October 2024, No 23NT01090). In both cases the court also rejected the argument based on the right to private and family life, essentially because the relatives in France were not shown to be unable to travel the other way. For a British family this is the passage to read twice: the fact that grandparents in Manchester miss their grandchildren in Lyon does not, on its own, defeat a refusal grounded on weak return guarantees.
The practical lesson for sponsors is a checklist, not a plea. Demonstrate the applicant’s ties to home with employment letters, property, bank statements showing regular income, and evidence of previous lawful travel and timely returns. Demonstrate your own capacity with the attestation, tax notices and pay slips that comfortably exceed your household’s needs plus the guests’ costs. Keep statements consistent across the attestation, the visa form and the cover letter: contradictions about dates, addresses or who pays for what feed exactly the finding of a risk of misuse that both Nantes judgments describe. Where a refusal arrives, British applicants use the same two-stage path as everyone else: first the review commission against visa refusals, then the administrative court in Nantes, which hears visa litigation for the whole country. File the commission appeal within the time stated on the refusal form, attach the missing evidence rather than repeating the first file, and take advice on whether the new evidence cures the stated grounds before paying for court proceedings.
B. When the Stay Runs Too Long: Removal Orders, Bans and the Lawful Alternatives
Overstaying converts a family visit into an enforcement file. Article L. 611-1 of the Code provides: “L’étranger, entré sur le territoire français sous couvert d’un visa désormais expiré ou, n’étant pas soumis à l’obligation du visa, entré en France plus de trois mois auparavant, s’est maintenu sur le territoire français sans être titulaire d’un titre de séjour ou, le cas échéant, sans demander le renouvellement du titre de séjour temporaire ou pluriannuel qui lui a été délivré”. A British guest who entered visa-free and stays past the 90 days without a residence document falls squarely within that wording, and the prefect may then issue an obligation to leave French territory, the OQTF, often combined with a ban on returning. The British government’s travel advice warns that overstaying the 90-day visa-free limit may lead to a ban from entering Schengen countries for up to three years. That ban is entered in the shared Schengen information system, so it bites at every external Schengen border, not only on the next trip to France. An OQTF must be challenged within its own short time limit stated on the order, before the administrative court, with evidence of the reasons for the extended presence and of any family ties in France.
Prevention is simpler than cure, and three tools exist. The first is counting correctly. Count back 180 days from each planned exit date, add up every day spent in any Schengen country, and keep a margin of several days for travel disruption; a grandmother who spent two weeks in Spain in October has only 76 days left for a winter stay in France. The second is the long-stay visitor visa for stays known in advance to exceed the ceiling: applied for at the French consulate in the United Kingdom before departure, it covers the whole planned stay, removes the 90-day arithmetic, and pairs naturally with the attestation and with a full-duration insurance certificate. The third is early contact with the prefecture when departure becomes impossible, with medical certificates, cancelled transport proofs and the insurance file in hand. Prefectures can arrange the situation where the facts justify it; judges reviewing a later removal order will ask whether the traveller approached the administration before or after the limit expired.
British residents in France sometimes ask whether their own status protects visiting relatives. It does not. Your Withdrawal Agreement card, your French tax residence and your years in France change nothing about a guest’s 90-day clock, and sheltering an overstaying relative exposes the host’s own credibility for future attestations, given the memorised files described in Part I. Conversely, do not confuse the two directions: a British resident who leaves France for a long period must protect their own residence rights, while a visiting relative must protect their own lawful presence. Each file stands alone. Where a relative visits regularly, for example grandparents alternating between Manchester and Paris through the year, keep a shared calendar with entry and exit dates, boarding passes and a copy of each attestation; when an officer at Roissy or the Tunnel asks how the 90 days are counted, a folder that answers in thirty seconds is worth more than a confident speech.
A final word on the Paris and Île-de-France specifics, since most British families land there. In Paris the attestation is requested at the mairie of the arrondissement of the host’s home, the prefecture de police handles incidents arising on Paris soil, and border checks at Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle apply the same four questions as everywhere else, with less patience at peak hours. Families renting a small Paris flat should measure the accommodation evidence with particular care: surface area per guest is where city files most often fail, and a refusal grounded on overcrowding is the hardest to overturn on appeal because the prefect and the judge apply the same normal-housing-conditions test as the mayor. Book the mairie’s appointment before buying the Eurostar tickets, not after.
Conclusion
A British family visit to France after Brexit succeeds when three documents line up: a validated attestation d’accueil obtained from the mairie in good time and sent to the United Kingdom as an original, a trip counted inside the 90 days in any 180 days with insurance, means and a return ticket to show at the border, and a file of return ties strong enough to survive a consulate that is legally entitled to hunt for misuse. The mayor’s refusal is appealable to the prefect within two months and then to the court; the consulate’s refusal goes through the review commission and then to Nantes; an overstay risks a removal order and a multi-year Schengen ban. None of these outcomes turns on sympathy, and all of them turn on paper produced early. Prepare the attestation before the flights, count the days before promising the dates, and keep every receipt. Handled that way, Christmas in France remains what it should be: a family visit, not a case file.