Bringing your car to France: the import rules, step by step

Post-Brexit, a British car arrives in France as a full third-country import — customs, VAT, conformity paperwork and a possible eco-tax. It sounds fearsome. It’s actually a sequence, and for most movers there’s an exemption that wipes out the biggest costs entirely. Here’s the whole path, in order. Updated for 2026.

Written by the Pimpernel team · Updated for 2026 · About a 13-minute read

The short version

There are two doors in. Bring the car as part of your household move and the franchise déménagement wipes out customs duty and VAT. Import outside that window and the headline bill is 10% duty plus 20% VAT on the car’s value.
The moving exemption has four conditions. You lived outside the EU for 12+ months, you’ve owned and used the car for 6+ months, it arrives within 12 months of your move — and you can’t sell, lend or hire it out for 12 months after it lands.
Even outside the exemption, the 10% isn’t automatic. Duty follows the car’s origin, not where you bought it: a UK-built car with an origin declaration can cross at 0%. A German-built car bought in Britain can’t.
Everything runs through the 846A. The customs certificate — issued paid or stamped exempt — is the key that unlocks French registration. No 846A, no carte grise.
Your MOT means nothing here. Cars over four years old need a French contrôle technique — and it will fail UK headlamps that haven’t been adjusted to dip right.
The malus catches the unwary — and spares the sensible. France’s CO₂ and weight taxes hit at first French registration, even for used imports — but with an age reduction, and they’re zero for cars first registered before 1 January 2015.
Right-hand drive is perfectly legal in France. Forever. You’ll just develop strong feelings about péage machines.
Once you’re resident, the clock runs. A French resident can’t simply keep running a UK-plated car — officially you have one month from import to register it.

First, a word on who’s writing this

Pimpernel’s founder moves cars across international borders for a living — homologation, customs, registration paperwork, the lot — albeit into Britain rather than out of it. So this guide is written with trade eyes and checked against the current French official sources, but in the usual Pimpernel spirit of honesty: the French system described here is one we’ve researched hard, not one we operate daily. Confirm the figures for your own case before you ship anything — they move, and your car’s details change the answer.

The two doors: moving with your car, or importing one

Everything about cost depends on which door you come through, so settle this first.

Door one: the car is part of your move. France (like the EU generally) lets you bring your personal belongings — explicitly including vehicles — free of customs duty and VAT when you transfer your main residence from outside the EU. This is the franchise déménagement, and for most Britons moving over with a car they already own, it turns the scariest bill in this guide into €0. The conditions, all of which must hold:

You’ve had your normal residence outside the EU for at least 12 months;
You’ve owned and used the car for at least 6 months before the move — and it was bought tax-paid, not tax-free;
It enters France within 12 months of you settling here;
And you undertake not to sell, hire out, lend or pledge it for 12 months after it arrives — break that and the waived taxes fall due.

The mechanics: you present customs with a dated, signed inventory of your goods in two copies (vehicles listed with make, model and identification), the completed Cerfa 10070 declaration, proof you lived outside the EU, and proof you’re settling in France. In return, for the car, customs issues the document this whole guide revolves around: the certificat de dédouanement 846A, stamped to show the taxes are exonerated rather than paid. Same key, free of charge.

Door two: any other import. Buying a car in the UK after you’ve moved, shipping one over outside the 12-month window, importing to sell — all of it is a standard third-country import: 10% customs duty and 20% French VAT, both calculated on the vehicle’s value (transport included), paid at customs, 846A issued as the receipt. On a £15,000 car that’s roughly £4,500 of tax before you’ve touched a single French form — which is why door one matters so much.

What nobody tells you

The car must be on the first inventory — even if it comes later

The franchise allows your move to arrive in instalments across the 12 months — but the inventory you hand customs on the first crossing must list everything you’ll ever claim the exemption for, car included. Decide six months in that you’ll bring the car after all, when it was never on that first list, and the exemption for it is gone. If there’s the faintest chance a vehicle follows you over, put it on the inventory from day one — listing it costs nothing, omitting it costs 30%.

The trade secret

Duty follows the car’s birthplace, not its number plate

That 10% customs duty isn’t a flat fee on “cars from Britain” — it’s a tariff that the UK–EU trade agreement removes for goods of UK origin. A Sunderland-built Nissan or a Swindon-built Honda, accompanied by an origin declaration from the seller, can cross at 0% duty (the 20% VAT still applies outside the franchise). A Munich-built BMW bought in Manchester gets no such favour — it’s not of UK origin, wherever it was registered. If you’re buying in the UK specifically to import, the factory the car came from is quietly worth thousands — ask about origin paperwork before you commit, not at the border.

The paperwork gauntlet, in order

However you came through customs, the road to a French registration — the carte grise — runs through the same four stations.

1. The 846A — already in hand if you’ve followed the above. Guard it; the registration system will not move without it.

2. Proof of conformity. France needs evidence the car meets European technical standards. For most UK-market cars this is the manufacturer’s certificat de conformité européen (CoC) — ordered from the manufacturer or their French office, typically for a fee in the low hundreds of euros. Some manufacturers’ French representatives can instead issue an attestation d’identification, which does the same job. If neither exists — a car never sold to European standards, or some post-Brexit models approved only to the separate GB scheme — you’re into RTI (réception à titre isolé): an individual inspection via the DREAL, slower, costlier, and best avoided by checking conformity before committing to a car.

3. A French contrôle technique, for any car over four years old — dated within six months of the registration application. Your MOT history, however immaculate, counts for nothing.

4. The carte grise application, online via the ANTS portal: the 846A, the conformity document, the CT report, the V5C, proof of identity and address, insurance, and the Cerfa application form. Fees are the fixed charges plus the regional tax per cheval fiscal — set by your region, so the same car costs different money in Occitanie and Normandy — plus any malus (next section). While the dossier is in train you can run on temporary WW plates; a French insurer will cover the car on its VIN or UK registration in the meantime.

The CT fail that catches everyone

Your headlamps are aimed at the wrong side of the road

A right-hand-drive car’s dipped beam is designed to light the left verge and avoid dazzling oncoming traffic — on the left. Drive it in France unmodified and it dazzles everyone; put it through a contrôle technique unmodified and it fails. Depending on the car, the fix is a beam-adjustment setting (many modern cars have a “tourist mode” buried in the menus — which is not a permanent solution for a permanent import), properly adjusted or replaced headlamp units, or approved deflectors. Sort it before the CT appointment, not after the fail sheet. And while you’re in the settings: the speedometer must be able to show km/h — virtually every UK car does, but check the dash display isn’t locked to miles.

The malus: France’s sting in the tail, and who escapes it

France taxes polluting and heavy cars at their first French registration — and “first French registration” includes a used import that’s spent fifteen years pottering around Surrey. Two taxes, cumulative: the malus CO₂ (from 108 g/km in 2026, climbing steeply to a cap of €80,000) and the malus masse (from 1,500 kg). Read that cap again — it isn’t a typo, and a big recent SUV can genuinely attract a five-figure bill.

Now the good news, in descending order of relief:

First registered before 1 January 2015? The malus is nil. Full stop. The faithful older car most movers actually bring crosses free.
Used imports get an age reduction. The tax is calculated on the scale that applied in the car’s first-registration year, then reduced by an official age-based decote — a car around ten years old sheds the overwhelming bulk of it.
Electric and hydrogen cars escape the CO₂ malus, and weight abatements apply to hybrids and EVs.

One trap inside the relief: the CO₂ figures used are the ones on the conformity paperwork. A car without European reception — the RTI cases above — is taxed on its administrative horsepower instead, on a scale that runs from €500 to €80,000, which can be brutally worse than the CO₂ route. Another reason exotic imports deserve a costing before they deserve a deposit.

Worth knowing before you ship

The 2015 line is the whole decision for many movers

Run the numbers before the car does. A pre-2015 first registration means no malus at all; an older car also tends to mean modest carte grise horsepower tax and — at thirty years — eventual véhicule de collection status, which at import means 0% duty and just 5.5% VAT even outside the moving franchise. A thirsty car first registered after 2015, by contrast, can attract a malus that exceeds its market value. The maths is rarely close: the sensible old car sails through; the recent premium SUV is often, brutally, worth more sold in Britain than landed in France. Do that sum first, sentiment second. (Sentiment is allowed to win — it just has to know the price.)

The clock, and the British particulars

Once you’re resident in France, you can’t simply carry on running a UK-plated car — officially the registration must be applied for within one month of the vehicle’s import, and in practice a French resident with foreign plates accumulates risk with every checkpoint: insurance validity, roadside checks, and awkward questions the longer it drags. Get the dossier moving early — the CoC order is usually the slowest piece, so start it before the car travels.

The reassurances, since British readers always ask: right-hand drive is entirely legal in France, permanently, no conversion required — the toll booths are the punishment. Your UK driving licence position is a separate topic (and a separate guide), and nothing here affects it. And no, the département on your new plates doesn’t commit you to anything — it’s decorative, and yes, you can choose the number of somewhere you’ve never been.

Last honest word: for many movers the right answer is to bring the sensible car through door one for nothing, run it while you settle, and buy French when it retires — skipping the gauntlet entirely the second time. The import process rewards exactly one thing: knowing the whole sequence before you start it. Which you now do.

Where next

Sorting your residency at the same time?

The carte de séjour has its own sequence, its own clock, and its own 2026 changes — and it’s the status everything else (including your one-month vehicle deadline) hangs off.

Read the residency guide →

Still deciding where you’ll live?

Whether you’re buying or renting first, the housing decision shapes the whole move — including where that newly-French car sleeps.

Read the renting guide →

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This guide offers practical, general information, not legal, tax or customs advice. Pimpernel are not customs agents, tax advisers or vehicle-registration professionals — and we have nothing to sell you. Duty rates, tax scales, malus thresholds and procedures change (several changed on 1 January 2026, and further changes are legislated for 2027), and how they apply depends entirely on your vehicle, your dates and your circumstances. Always confirm the current position with the French customs service (douane.gouv.fr), ANTS, or a professional before shipping or buying a vehicle.