You live in London, Manchester or Edinburgh, and your plan is to move to France to run your own business: a guesthouse in the Dordogne, an IT consultancy in Lyon, a building-renovation outfit in Brittany, a coaching or design practice in Paris. Since Brexit, that plan starts with immigration paperwork, not with the business plan. As a British citizen you are a third-country national, and France will only let you settle to work for yourself if your project passes a specific legal test: the activity must be economically viable and must provide you with sufficient means of existence. Those words decide almost every approval and almost every refusal, so this guide explains what they mean in practice, how the file is assessed in London and then at the pr\u00e9fecture (the local office of the French state that issues residence permits), what income figure you must clear, and how to challenge a refusal before the administrative court. The law is stated as it stands on 12 October 2026. Figures for fees and income thresholds below come from the official service-public.fr information page on this card, verified on 1 June 2026, and every statute was checked in force on L\u00e9gifrance for this article. Court rulings cited are real decisions, quoted word for word, with links to their official publication. General guidance never decides an individual case: your bank statements, your registration documents and the date on each piece of evidence will weigh more than any article.<\/p>\n
If you live outside France, the rule is simple and strict. Article R421-8 of the Code de l’entr\u00e9e et du s\u00e9jour des \u00e9trangers et du droit d’asile (the CESEDA, the French code governing entry, residence and asylum) provides: “L’\u00e9tranger r\u00e9sidant hors de France qui sollicite la d\u00e9livrance de la carte de s\u00e9jour pr\u00e9vue \u00e0 l’article L. 421-5 pr\u00e9sente sa demande aupr\u00e8s des autorit\u00e9s diplomatiques ou consulaires fran\u00e7aises territorialement comp\u00e9tentes dans son pays de r\u00e9sidence.<\/a>” In plain terms, a British resident applies in Britain, through the French consular post and the visa application centre serving the United Kingdom, for a long-stay visa that matches the entrepreneur plan. You cannot fly in as a tourist, start trading, and sort out the paperwork later. The long-stay visa is the gateway: after a first year of lawful residence under it, you apply for the one-year temporary residence card, and later for the four-year multi-year card examined in Part II.<\/p>\n The consulate does not decide in a vacuum. Before you even file, you must ask for an opinion on the economic viability of your self-employed activity from the department-level unit responsible for foreign labour (the service en charge de la main d’oeuvre \u00e9trang\u00e8re, now usually the DREETS platform) in the d\u00e9partement where you intend to set up. Article R421-9 states: “Pr\u00e9alablement au d\u00e9p\u00f4t de sa demande de d\u00e9livrance de la carte de s\u00e9jour pr\u00e9vue \u00e0 l’article L. 421-5 , l’\u00e9tranger sollicite un avis sur la viabilit\u00e9 \u00e9conomique de l’activit\u00e9 non salari\u00e9e aupr\u00e8s du service en charge de la main d’\u0153uvre \u00e9trang\u00e8re comp\u00e9tent pour le d\u00e9partement dans lequel il souhaite r\u00e9aliser cette activit\u00e9.<\/a>” That opinion is advisory, but in practice a negative one is very hard to overcome, so treat that office as your first audience, not the consul. Write the business plan for a sceptical civil servant: who the customers are, what competitors charge, month-by-month revenue assumptions for at least the first year, and the documents behind every number.<\/p>\n The file itself depends on whether the activity is commercial, craft or industrial on the one hand, or an independent professional (liberal) activity on the other. For a shop, a trade or a company, expect to produce the completed cerfa form for traders and craftsmen, a UK criminal-record extract if you still live outside France, evidence of your capacity to carry on the activity, the viability opinion just mentioned, proof of registration or affiliation (company statutes and K or Kbis extract, or affiliation to the social-security scheme for the self-employed, at the latest when the card is manufactured), an open-format written presentation of the project with a business plan and a multi-year projected budget, and a financial guarantee from a bank or insurer approved in France or a statement showing a credit balance on an account in your name opened in France. If you are setting up as a micro-entrepreneur (the simplified sole-trader scheme formerly called auto-entrepreneur) or as an entrepreneur individuel, add the lease promise or domiciliation contract for the business address, or, for the takeover of an existing business, the sale-contract promise, the registration extract of the previous operator and the lease in the owner’s name. For a company governed by French law, add the draft articles showing how the capital is to be divided; for a subsidiary or branch of a foreign company, the appointment papers and the foreign parent’s articles. Regulated activities need the practising authorisation: craft trades, pharmacies, transport, estate agency and the like cannot be launched on a business plan alone. For an independent professional activity, the core items are URSSAF registration (URSSAF being the body that collects social-security contributions), evidence that the activity can generate the monthly income examined below, authorisation or registration with the relevant professional body for regulated professions, and the same foreign-labour opinion. Civil-status documents must come with a French translation by a sworn translator (traducteur interpr\u00e8te agr\u00e9\u00e9), and every applicant supplies a passport, proof of address under six months old, three identity photographs, the OFII medical certificate (OFII being the French Office for Immigration and Integration) and a signed commitment to respect the principles of the Republic.<\/p>\n Two lessons from the courts should shape the file from day one. First, a self-written business plan, on its own, proves very little. In a 15 October 2024 ruling, the Nantes administrative court of appeal upheld the refusal of an entrepreneur long-stay visa applied for at the French consulate in Washington by the founder of an IT services business. He had produced a business plan written by himself, a savings-account statement and a letter from a client company certifying a long-standing service contract paying monthly fees. The court answered: “les diff\u00e9rents documents pr\u00e9sent\u00e9s ne sont pas suffisants pour \u00e9tablir que la soci\u00e9t\u00e9 que M. A… se propose de cr\u00e9er en France dispose d’une capacit\u00e9 financi\u00e8re suffisante et de perspectives d’activit\u00e9 susceptibles de g\u00e9n\u00e9rer une activit\u00e9 \u00e9conomiquement viable.<\/a>” The decisive detail was that the alleged client income did not appear on the bank statements produced: “Toutefois, les revenus all\u00e9gu\u00e9s tir\u00e9s de cette activit\u00e9 n’apparaissent pas sur les relev\u00e9s bancaires produits.<\/a>” The mechanism is exactly the one a London applicant faces: consular refusal, then appeal to the commission de recours contre les refus de visa (the board that hears appeals against visa refusals), then to the Nantes administrative court. Bank statements must show the money; contracts must be corroborated by transfers; projections must be anchored in signed letters of intent, not in hope.<\/p>\n Second, the pr\u00e9fet also checks your background. Article R421-10 provides: “Lors de la demande de d\u00e9livrance ou de renouvellement de la carte de s\u00e9jour pr\u00e9vue \u00e0 l’article L. 421-5, le pr\u00e9fet v\u00e9rifie la compatibilit\u00e9 de l’activit\u00e9 en cause avec la s\u00e9curit\u00e9, la salubrit\u00e9 et la tranquillit\u00e9 publiques ainsi que, le cas \u00e9ch\u00e9ant, l’absence de condamnation ou de d\u00e9cision emportant l’interdiction d’exercer une activit\u00e9 commerciale en France.<\/a>” A spent UK conviction or a French ban on managing a business can therefore sink an otherwise solid file, and service-public.fr warns that the pr\u00e9fecture may refuse the card after forgery, serious offences such as drug trafficking, trafficking in human beings, procuring, undignified working or housing conditions, or violence against elected officials and public or security officers. Disclose, explain, and evidence rehabilitation rather than hoping nobody looks.<\/p>\n The substantive test sits in one sentence of statute. Article L421-5 CESEDA provides: “L’\u00e9tranger qui exerce une activit\u00e9 non salari\u00e9e, \u00e9conomiquement viable et dont il tire des moyens d’existence suffisants, dans le respect de la l\u00e9gislation en vigueur, se voit d\u00e9livrer une carte de s\u00e9jour temporaire portant la mention ” entrepreneur\/ profession lib\u00e9rale ” d’une dur\u00e9e maximale d’un an.<\/a>” Three cumulative conditions: a genuinely self-employed activity, economic viability, and sufficient means of existence drawn from that activity, all within the law. Fail one, and the card is refused; fail one at renewal, and the card is not renewed and an obligation to leave France (OQTF) usually follows, as Part II explains.<\/p>\n What counts as sufficient means? The courts apply a concrete floor: the full-time minimum wage (salaire minimum de croissance, the SMIC). In a 16 October 2025 ruling, the Toulouse administrative court of appeal stated the rule plainly: “la d\u00e9livrance d’une carte de s\u00e9jour temporaire autorisant l’exercice d’une activit\u00e9 professionnelle \u00e0 l’\u00e9tranger qui vient exercer en France une profession commerciale, industrielle ou artisanale est subordonn\u00e9e, \u00e0 la viabilit\u00e9 \u00e9conomique de l’activit\u00e9 envisag\u00e9e et la capacit\u00e9 de cette activit\u00e9 \u00e0 lui procurer des ressources au moins \u00e9quivalentes au salaire minimum de croissance correspondant \u00e0 un emploi \u00e0 temps plein.<\/a>” The Nantes visa ruling uses the same floor: the applicant had to show income “au moins \u00e9quivalents au salaire minimum de croissance correspondant \u00e0 un emploi \u00e0 temps plein.<\/a>” And the administration translates the floor into a monthly figure: service-public.fr requires, for continuation of a commercial, craft or industrial activity as for an independent professional activity, evidence of resources from the activity of at least 1,867.02 euros per month. Budget your first year around that number, in euros, from the business itself.<\/p>\n Four refinements from the case law decide real files. First, timing is everything: the judge assesses your means at the date of the contested decision, not with hindsight. The Lyon administrative court of appeal, on 17 October 2024, rejected a renewal challenge by a self-employed applicant whose turnover for the first three quarters of 2022 was 10,764 euros gross, topped by a 6,079-euro invoice dated after the refusal: “Rien au dossier ne permet d’\u00e9tablir que les revenus que M. B… tire de son activit\u00e9 lui auraient assur\u00e9, \u00e0 la date de la d\u00e9cision contest\u00e9e, des moyens suffisants d’existence.<\/a>” A late invoice, a contract signed after the refusal, a transfer received after the decision: none of it counts. File when the twelve months behind you already prove the point.<\/p>\n Second, only self-employed income counts toward the self-employed test. The Toulouse applicant was a minority shareholder and co-manager of a cleaning company and also held a permanent employment contract (CDI) with that same company, plus he had launched a second clearance business. The court held: “M. B… ne peut utilement se pr\u00e9valoir des salaires qu’il a per\u00e7us de la soci\u00e9t\u00e9 Abacab d\u00e8s lors que ces revenus rel\u00e8vent d’une activit\u00e9 salari\u00e9e.<\/a>” If you keep a salaried job alongside the business, that salary may help you live, but it does not help you pass the L421-5 test. The dividends point reinforces the timing rule: a one-off dividend of 16,380 euros paid after the refusal date proved nothing “\u00e0 la date de la d\u00e9cision attaqu\u00e9e<\/a>“, and monthly VAT returns for a few months, without accounts showing what you actually drew, “ne suffisent pas \u00e0 d\u00e9montrer la viabilit\u00e9 \u00e9conomique de ses activit\u00e9s, ni qu’il en tirerait des moyens d’existence suffisants.<\/a>” Turnover is not drawings: produce the account books showing your actual remuneration over the months before the decision, plus the tax notice (avis d’imposition) when one exists.<\/p>\n Third, the activity must match your qualifications or experience. Service-public.fr makes it a condition in its own right, and pr\u00e9fectures read business plans with that lens: a former software engineer opening a consultancy is coherent; the same person opening a roofing firm without craft qualification invites the refusal examined in our companion guide for British builders, plumbers and electricians seeking trade recognition and artisan registration in France<\/a>. Regulated professions add a hard gate: lawyers, accountants, health practitioners and similar must show registration with the relevant order before the residence logic even starts.<\/p>\n Fourth, registration is constitutive, not decorative. Article R421-7 extends the L421-5 scheme to foreigners whose self-employed activity requires registration “soit au Registre national des entreprises en tant qu’entreprise du secteur des m\u00e9tiers et de l’artisanat ou au Registre du commerce et des soci\u00e9t\u00e9s, soit \u00e0 l’Union de recouvrement des cotisations de s\u00e9curit\u00e9 sociale et d’allocations familiales (URSSAF)<\/a>“, and service-public.fr requires the activity to be registered with the single business-formalities window (guichet unique des formalit\u00e9s des entreprises) and carried on as the principal activity. An unregistered activity, however profitable, is not an activit\u00e9 non salari\u00e9e within the meaning of the statute. Register first, trade second, renew third.<\/p>\n The first card lasts one year at most, and renewal is not automatic: you must still satisfy every condition for issue, with the same monthly-means evidence updated. Apply at the pr\u00e9fecture or sous-pr\u00e9fecture of your home address within the two months before expiry. Miss the deadline without force majeure or a valid visa, and service-public.fr warns of an extra 180-euro regularisation visa fee on top of the card’s cost. The first card costs 350 euros (50 euros of stamp duty plus 300 euros of tax), paid in tax stamps (timbres fiscaux) when the card is handed over; renewal of the temporary card costs 250 euros. Keep the OFII medical certificate, the proof of address and the photographs ready again, because the supporting documents are the same as for the first application, updated to the renewal date.<\/p>\n At the end of the first temporary card, the horizon widens: you may ask for a four-year multi-year card (carte de s\u00e9jour pluriannuelle). Article L433-4 CESEDA sets the general gateway: “Au terme d’une premi\u00e8re ann\u00e9e de s\u00e9jour r\u00e9gulier en France accompli au titre d’un visa de long s\u00e9jour tel que d\u00e9fini au 2\u00b0 de l’article L. 411-1 ou, sous r\u00e9serve des exceptions pr\u00e9vues \u00e0 l’article L. 433-5, d’une carte de s\u00e9jour temporaire, l’\u00e9tranger b\u00e9n\u00e9ficie, \u00e0 sa demande, d’une carte de s\u00e9jour pluriannuelle d\u00e8s lors que : 1\u00b0 Il justifie de son assiduit\u00e9, sous r\u00e9serve de circonstances exceptionnelles, et du s\u00e9rieux de sa participation aux formations prescrites par l’Etat dans le cadre du contrat d’int\u00e9gration r\u00e9publicaine conclu en application de l’article L. 413-2 ; 2\u00b0 Il a obtenu un r\u00e9sultat \u00e0 l’examen mentionn\u00e9 au sixi\u00e8me alin\u00e9a de l’article L. 413-3 sup\u00e9rieur ou \u00e9gal \u00e0 un seuil fix\u00e9 par d\u00e9cret ; 3\u00b0 Il justifie d’une connaissance de la langue fran\u00e7aise lui permettant au moins de comprendre des expressions fr\u00e9quemment utilis\u00e9es dans le langage courant, de communiquer lors de t\u00e2ches habituelles et d’\u00e9voquer des sujets qui correspondent \u00e0 des besoins imm\u00e9diats.<\/a>” In practice, service-public.fr summarises the republican-integration conditions for this route as attendance and serious participation in the CIR courses (the contrat d’int\u00e9gration r\u00e9publicaine, the republican-integration contract signed with the state), French at level A2 for a first multi-year card, and success in the civic examination for the multi-year card, with exemptions after age 65. The 5\u00b0 of the same article adds the obvious: you must still satisfy the L421-5 business conditions. A thriving business with no French and no civic exam does not get the four-year card; start the language work in year one.<\/p>\n Two related situations deserve attention. If you already hold a French residence card for another reason, a student card or a visitor card for example, and your business project matures, Article L421-6 allows a change of status: “l’\u00e9tranger qui sollicite la d\u00e9livrance d’une carte de s\u00e9jour pluriannuelle portant la mention ” entrepreneur\/ profession lib\u00e9rale ” et qui est titulaire d’une carte de s\u00e9jour d\u00e9livr\u00e9e pour un autre motif b\u00e9n\u00e9ficie d’une carte de s\u00e9jour temporaire d’une dur\u00e9e d’un an portant la mention demand\u00e9e lorsque les conditions de d\u00e9livrance de cette carte sont remplies.<\/a>” You apply to the pr\u00e9fet of your d\u00e9partement of residence under Article R421-8, prove the L421-5 conditions, and receive a one-year entrepreneur card before moving to the multi-year card, with the L433-4 integration conditions added at that stage. Note the trap for visitors: working, even for your own micro-entreprise, while holding a visiteur card that forbids work breaches the card’s terms. Structure the sequence as application first, registration second, trading third.<\/p>\n Practical management through the year matters as much as the law. Keep monthly accounts that isolate your drawings from turnover, file VAT and income returns on time (the bordereau de situation fiscale P237 and the income-tax notice are standard renewal exhibits), keep the business insurance over the premises, vehicles and assets the activity requires, and keep the lease or domiciliation contract current, because renewal exhibits expressly include them. For a micro-entreprise, the r\u00e9gime social des ind\u00e9pendants affiliation and the URSSAF account are the spine of the file; for a company, the Kbis extract under three months old, the articles and the accountant’s statements play that role. When drawings dip below the monthly floor, act before the renewal date: document the dip (illness, a lost client, seasonal trade), show the corrective steps (new contracts, price rises, cost cuts) and rebuild the twelve-month average, because the judge will read the file exactly as the pr\u00e9fet found it on decision day.<\/p>\n A refusal of issue or renewal almost never travels alone. Article L611-1 CESEDA lists the cases in which the administration may order a foreigner to leave France, and its 3\u00b0 covers precisely this situation: “L’\u00e9tranger s’est vu refuser la d\u00e9livrance d’un titre de s\u00e9jour, le renouvellement du titre de s\u00e9jour, du document provisoire d\u00e9livr\u00e9 \u00e0 l’occasion d’une demande de titre de s\u00e9jour ou de l’autorisation provisoire de s\u00e9jour qui lui avait \u00e9t\u00e9 d\u00e9livr\u00e9 ou s’est vu retirer un de ces documents ;<\/a>” The standard package is therefore a single order combining refusal, OQTF with usually thirty days to leave, and designation of the country of return. Each head can be challenged, but the OQTF falls only if the refusal itself was unlawful: the Lyon court recalled that where the refusal stands, the applicant “n’est pas fond\u00e9 \u00e0 soutenir que l’obligation de quitter le territoire fran\u00e7ais serait ill\u00e9gale par voie de cons\u00e9quence de l’ill\u00e9galit\u00e9 du refus de titre de s\u00e9jour<\/a>“, rejecting that chain in that case because the refusal was lawful.<\/p>\n Act fast. Article R421-1 of the Code de justice administrative (the code of administrative justice) provides: “La juridiction ne peut \u00eatre saisie que par voie de recours form\u00e9 contre une d\u00e9cision, et ce, dans les deux mois \u00e0 partir de la notification ou de la publication de la d\u00e9cision attaqu\u00e9e.<\/a>” Two months from notification to file with the administrative court (tribunal administratif) of the pr\u00e9fecture’s area; for a consular visa refusal made in London, the prior appeal goes to the visa-refusal board and the court appeal lies in Nantes, as the Washington case showed. Late challenges fail on procedure before the merits are even read, and the 180-euro regularisation fee for late renewal applications is a separate administrative penalty, not a substitute for the court deadline.<\/p>\n On the merits, judges examine four layers in a fairly fixed order, and each maps onto a way to build the challenge. First, reasoning (motivation): refusals must state the legal and factual grounds in writing. The Toulouse court recalled Articles L211-2 and L211-5 of the Code des relations entre le public et l’administration, under which unfavourable individual decisions must be reasoned, with “l’\u00e9nonc\u00e9 des consid\u00e9rations de droit et de fait qui constituent le fondement de la d\u00e9cision<\/a>“, and held that a refusal stating that the applicant had not shown viable self-employed activity or sufficient means since creation satisfied that test. A bare stamp or a form letter with no facts remains annullable; a refusal that names the missing viability and the missing means survives this plea.<\/p>\n Second, the core plea: error of assessment (erreur d’appr\u00e9ciation) against Article L421-5. This is where the file wins or loses. The three rulings above show the method: the court reconstructs the twelve months before the decision from bank statements, account books, tax notices and dated invoices, and asks whether drawings from the self-employed activity reached the full-time minimum-wage floor with a viable trajectory. Produce exactly that reconstruction in the appeal, with an accountant’s certificate tying turnover to drawings to tax, and explain every anomaly the pr\u00e9fet relied on. New post-decision evidence helps only marginally, as Lyon showed, so frame it as confirmation of a trend already visible at decision date, not as a rescue.<\/p>\nB. The viability test and the monthly income figure judges actually apply<\/h3>\n
II. Keeping the card: renewal, the four-year card and fighting a refusal<\/h2>\n
A. Renewal, the four-year multi-year card and republican integration<\/h3>\n
B. Refusal and the order to leave: the two-month challenge before the administrative court<\/h3>\n