Your pallets left Shenzhen, New York or Istanbul weeks ago, the container is sitting at Rotterdam, Antwerp, Le Havre or Roissy, and nothing moves. The freight forwarder writes that French customs needs an EORI number you have never heard of, the delivery to your French warehouse or your French customer is suspended, storage charges tick up every day, and somebody mentions import VAT, customs duties and a guarantee before anything is released. If you run the business from abroad with no French office, the next question is brutally practical: what exactly does France require to let your goods in, how do you pay the tax without flying to Paris, and how do you get a blocked shipment released?<\/p>\n
This guide answers for a foreign founder or operations team importing goods into France for the first time, whether the goods stay in France or merely clear customs here before moving on. It explains the EORI identifier that French customs demands, the three ways your goods can be cleared \u2014 including the registered customs representative your forwarder keeps mentioning \u2014 and the import VAT system that has applied since 2022, with its automatic reverse charge on the French VAT return and no cash advance. It closes with what a held shipment really costs and how to challenge an assessment from abroad. French terms are translated throughout, and every decisive rule is quoted from its official source.<\/p>\n
Nothing clears customs in the European Union without an identified operator. The EORI (Economic Operator Registration and Identification) number is the single customs identifier used across all Member States: your declarations, your guarantee, your authorisations and your VAT position on imported goods all hang off it. A company established outside the Union that imports into France needs its own EORI, and a foreign company that already holds an EORI issued by another Member State generally uses that same number in France rather than applying twice. Without a valid EORI on the import declaration, the customs system refuses the filing and the goods sit \u2014 which is the most common reason a first-time importer’s shipment is flagged as incomplete within hours of arrival.<\/p>\n
For businesses with a French establishment, the French EORI mirrors the French business register: it is built as FR followed by the SIRET (the fourteen-digit identifier of the French establishment, combining the nine-digit SIREN of the company and the five-digit NIC of the site). The official French customs guidance explains that the number is requested online through the SOPRANO EORI service, the dematerialised channel for applying, amending or tracking the request, with one route for operators holding the customs-operator certification and a simplified-access route for the others. Since April 2023 any operator can obtain a single EORI at SIREN level, which must be used in the European customs applications, while establishment-level EORI numbers remain accepted outside those applications until their announced switch-off. A foreign company with no French establishment follows the non-resident route in the same online service and receives a French EORI usable for its French import declarations. Apply before the goods sail, not after they land: issuance takes days in a clean file and weeks if the administration asks for translations or powers, and every day of waiting at the port is a day of storage and demurrage charged by people who are not customs.<\/p>\n
EORI is only the key to the door; the tax position behind it decides what you pay. French VAT starts from the principle in Article 256 of the CGI (Code g\u00e9n\u00e9ral des imp\u00f4ts, the French Tax Code): “Sont soumises \u00e0 la taxe sur la valeur ajout\u00e9e les livraisons de biens et les prestations de services effectu\u00e9es \u00e0 titre on\u00e9reux par un assujetti agissant en tant que tel.”<\/a> Importation \u2014 bringing goods from outside the European Union into France \u2014 is one of the taxable events alongside domestic supplies, and the place rules in Article 258 of the CGI confirm the territorial logic: “Le lieu de livraison de biens meubles corporels est r\u00e9put\u00e9 se situer en France lorsque le bien se trouve en France”<\/a> at dispatch, installation or handover as the case may be. Goods you import and then sell from a French warehouse, goods you import for installation at a French customer site, and goods you import and immediately resell to a French business are therefore French-taxed flows from the moment they cross the border, and the importer of record must be identified for both customs and VAT. This identification step belongs to the same set-up sequence as the bank account, the Kbis (the registration certificate issued by the greffe, the commercial-court registry) and the first hire described in our general walkthrough for newcomers, Setting Up a Company in France as a Foreign Founder: Bank Account, Kbis, VAT and Your First Hire<\/a> \u2014 customs is simply the chapter that applies when the goods come from outside the Union rather than from another Member State.<\/p>\n The mirror image helps to memorise the system. Goods leaving the Union are exempt on exit: Article 262 of the CGI states that “Sont exon\u00e9r\u00e9es de la taxe sur la valeur ajout\u00e9e : 1\u00b0 les livraisons de biens exp\u00e9di\u00e9s ou transport\u00e9s par le vendeur ou pour son compte, en dehors de la Communaut\u00e9 europ\u00e9enne ainsi que les prestations de services directement li\u00e9es \u00e0 l’exportation”<\/a>. Export exemption on the way out, taxation on the way in, and identification in both directions \u2014 that symmetry is the whole architecture. Keep the transport documents that prove each direction from the first shipment, because the exit proof conditions a future exemption and the entry documents set the taxable base, and both will be requested years later when the audit comes.<\/p>\n A foreign company rarely files its own French import declarations. Declarations are lodged in the French customs IT systems, in French, under strict format and deadline discipline, and errors block release or create a customs debt in your name. The standard solution is customs representation: a professional established in the Union acts in your name and on your behalf. European Union law, Regulation 952 of 2013 establishing the Union Customs Code, frames this representation across all Member States, and France layers on its own registration regime for the professionals who practise it regularly. The Conseil d’\u00c9tat (the supreme court for administrative disputes) confirmed the solidity of that French framework on 9 October 2019, decision number 426349, in a case brought by the forwarding industry against the order of 13 April 2016 on customs representation and the registration of customs representatives, holding that “Article 1er : La requ\u00eate de l’UTL est rejet\u00e9e.”<\/a> The challenge failed; the registered-representative system stands, with its circular on the obligations of the registered customs representative.<\/p>\n Three representation patterns matter in practice, and the choice changes who owes what if something goes wrong. In direct representation, the representative acts in your name and on your behalf: you remain the declarant and the customs debtor, the representative’s liability is that of an agent, and the duties and import VAT attach to you. In indirect representation, the representative acts in its own name but on your behalf: it becomes the declarant alongside you, and the customs debt can be collected from either, which is why serious forwarders price, guarantee and document this mandate carefully. The third pattern, specific to regular French practice, is the registered customs representative (repr\u00e9sentant en douane enregistr\u00e9): a professional meeting competence, reliability and guarantee conditions, recorded by the administration, whose registered status structures its obligations toward both customs and its clients. For a foreign importer with no French team, the registered representative is usually the right answer: it files, advances or secures the duties where an advance remains due, holds the powers and the EORI references, and receives the administration’s questions first.<\/p>\n Mandate discipline is where foreign importers win or lose future disputes. Sign a written customs mandate before the first declaration, in English and French, stating whether representation is direct or indirect, the scope of goods and flows covered, who provides the tariff classification, origin and value data, who holds the preferential-origin proofs, and how instructions and invoice flows circulate. Never let commercial staff invent customs values over the phone: the value declared sets duties and the import VAT base, and a value built on a transfer price, a royalty or a post-import rebate without a documented method becomes the core of a reassessment three years later. Keep the mandate, the commercial invoice, the transport contract, the packing list, the origin certificates and the classification analysis in one file per shipment, because the customs audit samples shipments, not years, and a complete 2026 file answered in days costs a fraction of a reconstructed one answered in months. Where your group already runs a French subsidiary alongside the foreign importer, decide explicitly which entity imports: goods imported by the subsidiary under its SIRET and EORI are its flows, goods imported by the foreign head office under its own EORI are its flows, and mixing the two numbers across declarations and invoices is one of the fastest routes to a joint audit of both.<\/p>\n The single biggest cash-flow fact about importing into France is recent. Since 1 January 2022, the collection of import VAT moved from customs to the tax administration, and the reverse charge (autoliquidation) became mandatory and automatic for all VAT-identified businesses: the importer declares the import VAT and deducts it on the same French VAT return, the CA3 (the standard monthly or quarterly French VAT return form), with no cash advance and no prior authorisation. The official customs guidance states the mechanism plainly \u2014 simultaneous collection and deduction on the VAT return, declaration and payment made on the return instead of on the customs declaration \u2014 and adds that no prior authorisation is needed. For a foreign company this transforms the economics of a first import: instead of advancing 20 percent at the border and waiting months for a refund, a VAT-registered importer neutralises the VAT on the return, provided it is properly identified and files correctly.<\/p>\n Identification is therefore the precondition, and the clock from domestic VAT applies. Article 286 of the CGI requires that “Dans les quinze jours du commencement de ses op\u00e9rations, souscrire au bureau d\u00e9sign\u00e9 par un arr\u00eat\u00e9 une d\u00e9claration conforme au mod\u00e8le fourni par l’administration.”<\/a> A foreign company with no French establishment registers with the SIEE (Service des imp\u00f4ts des entreprises \u00e9trang\u00e8res, the tax office for foreign companies at Noisy-le-Grand near Paris); a company with a French establishment registers with the SIE (Service des imp\u00f4ts des entreprises, the local corporate tax office) of that establishment. Once identified, Article 287 of the CGI requires that “Tout redevable de la taxe sur la valeur ajout\u00e9e identifi\u00e9 conform\u00e9ment aux dispositions combin\u00e9es des articles 286 ter et 286 ter A est tenu de remettre au service des imp\u00f4ts dont il d\u00e9pend et dans le d\u00e9lai fix\u00e9 par arr\u00eat\u00e9 une d\u00e9claration conforme au mod\u00e8le prescrit par l’administration.”<\/a> Under the standard regime that means the monthly CA3, on which the import VAT appears both as output tax and, where the deduction conditions are met, as input tax. The Paris administrative court of appeal recalled the underlying liability rule on 27 September 2023, case number 22PA02852, quoting that “1. La taxe sur la valeur ajout\u00e9e doit \u00eatre acquitt\u00e9e par les personnes qui r\u00e9alisent les op\u00e9rations imposables, sous r\u00e9serve des cas vis\u00e9s aux articles 275 \u00e0 277 A o\u00f9 le versement de la taxe peut \u00eatre suspendu.”<\/a> Where the reverse charge does not apply \u2014 typically a non-taxable person importing without VAT identification \u2014 Article 1695 of the CGI warns that “Dans ces situations, la taxe sur la valeur ajout\u00e9e est recouvr\u00e9e et contr\u00f4l\u00e9e selon les m\u00eames proc\u00e9dures et sous les m\u00eames sanctions, garanties, s\u00fbret\u00e9s et privil\u00e8ges que les droits de douanes.”<\/a> In other words, unidentified importers pay at the border under customs enforcement; identified importers self-assess on the return.<\/p>\nB. Who clears your goods in France: direct, indirect and registered customs representation<\/h3>\n
II. Paying French import VAT without pre-paying it, then fixing a blocked shipment from abroad<\/h2>\n
A. Import VAT since 2022: the automatic reverse charge on your French VAT return<\/h3>\n