First steps in France

This is mainly written from the perspective of a recent recruit, who is an EU citizen. Things may differ drastically if you are from outside the EU, especially since this may involve various other issues such as visas, work permits, etc. which are not dealt with on this information page. In any case, even if you are a non-EU citizen, this page may be useful since it describes a (strict) subset of what you may expect. For non EU citizens, information may differ between countries, please contact administration.

In doubt, please contact secretariat@irif.fr for advice and guidance

For help you can refer to these organizations:

• Science accueil is accessible to all members of a laboratory affiliated to CNRS (including IRIF). They can help you for administrative procedures, finding housing, mental health support, French courses, cultural visits.
  VERY IMPORTANT: If you contact them you have to specify that you belong to a laboratory that is managed by “Délégation Régionale Villejuif ” (you have to enter it in the form under the entry « parent body » or « organisme de tutelle »).
• The access service (https://access.ciup.fr) provided by CIUP can help you with most of the procedures mentioned hereafter.
• In general, a lot of information is available on the Euraxess website which is available in French and English.

The procedure to obtain a visa for France can be quite difficult. The procedure is done on France visa. There are many types of visa, the ones to come to IRIF are the following:

• Short stay visa: (aka tourist visa) valid for up to 90 days, allows you to make visits in Europe but not to work there
• Student visa: for interns only. Valid only for 1 year, needs an additional authorization for work (and thus for receiving a salary). Not recommended for PhD students.
• Passeport talent chercheur: for PhD students, post-docs, and researchers (it requires at least a master's degree). Needs a convention d'accueil (welcome agreement) be to delivered. Depending on your status, this document is issued by a different service and with different required documents. This type of visa is recommended for researchers, as it allows you to work, to perform an additional activity (e.g., teaching).

NOTA BENE PHD STUDENTS: Even if you already have a student visa (e.g. you did your undergraduate studies in France), if you start a PhD at IRIF we strongly suggest to apply for a Passeport talent chercheur.

We can not help you obtaining a visa (apart from providing advice and all needed documentation) or speed up the process: the procedures are in the hand of the ministry for internal affairs. More useful information is provided by Euraxess.

Some administrations may demand a copy of your birth certificate. The first time, I did provide them with a copy translated into French by an authorized translator. However, these requests may keep repeating. For weird reasons, they would always require one that is at most 3 months old. The reason is that French birth certificates have margin annotations, and hence these can get updated frequently. This is not the case for most others, but the HR will not know that. Furthermore, if you are an EU Citizen, European law requires them to accept the one you already have in its original language. Please remind them this, whenever applicable.
Please be aware that in many countries you may request a Multilingual birth certificate, which does not demand a translation to be used in France (see: Multilingual Extracts).

Congratulations on your new position! CNRS will send you an email with 10 word documents as an attachment, with not much explanation about their purpose whatsoever. These contain: various things you have to fill in and send back as soon as possible, a generic form you would use whenever you want to ask to get your public transport pass reimbursed, various pieces of miscellaneous information. Most of these are fairly useless, such as the “List des risques professionels inhérents au poste” which looks like some thing you would have to fill in, but you should feel free to ignore. There are various other cryptic pieces of information they ask you to fill in, such as related to your military service. Feel free to ignore these as well.

There is many data to give and documents to fill and send/upload these at the different phases of the recruitment. Some documents might only be needed in certain cases (e.g. SFT only if you have children). You can ask for a transport fee reimbursement by filling a specific form. The PVI is to be filled only after you arrive at IRIF. Finally you will need to provide a medical certificate issued by one of the practitionners from a given list.

You will be asked to choose a social security provider that will grant you a social security number and a “carte vitale” which you need for all of your medical related endeavors. As a member of a university or research organization, you have two options: MGEN and MAGE. We strongly recommend MGEN since MAGE is not available everywhere in France. MGEN and MAGE may also offer you a “mutuelle”, which is an optional complementary health insurance. For nonpermanents: you may also register at CPAM (the universal social security provider) in the départment (administrative division) you live in. The information on how to proceed is given here, CPAM also has a phone number that provides help in English: 09 74 75 36 46.

While registration with social security normally needs to be done through your employer, you may help them and speed the process up, especially as a nonpermanent, by registering yourself. You will then have to fill a form and add a copy your work contract, last payslips, proof of residence, birth certificate translated in French, and a copy of your ID.

Anyone, past the registration, all the other steps such as obtaining the carte vitale or adding a “mutuelle” are your own responsibility, HR can not help you in this process.

You will at first be provided a temoporary social security number, which will be usefull for accessing medical services. Your final number will be issued only after several months.

MGEN, MAGE and, also CPAM are administratively divided by département, and there might be some discrepancies between divisions. In case of a problem, do not hesitate to ask for help.

You will need a bank account for paying for home insurance, transportation and various reimbursements. Although European law requires all services to accept any IBAN from SEPA, it is not the case in practice: most businesses in France that require an IBAN will expressly ask for a French one.

You may either go to any branch of a bank company and fill an application form or use an online banking service. Before opening an account, make sure to check the maintenance fees and operation fees for the account.

To open an account you will be asked to show a passport, a proof of residential, a proof of your job status and your handwritten signature.

This is a tough one! Good options to look for a rental online are leboncoin.fr, PAP.fr, seloger.com, and if you also search for flatsharing lacartedescolocs.com, but you have to be proactive. The way rentals work is that landlords receive an application file from each prospective tenant, then they decide who to rent the place to. The reason is that French laws offer a high level of protection to tenants, and makes it very hard to have them evicted. So landlords want to make sure that you are going to pay the rent and leave the apartment in a good state.

Putting together a file is not entirely trivial. You need your last few “fiches the paie” i.e. payslips, your ID, work contract, and more importantly a guarantor. This is the person who will be responsible for your rental in case you cannot fulfill your obligations. They need to provide quite a few pieces of personal information aswell: salary sheet, ID, proof of housing and tax notice.

If you are under 30 or have a job for less than 6 months, you may be eligible to the Visale programme, which is a free public guarantor. If you still do not find a guarantor, banks will gladly guarantee for you in exchange for a fee (approximately one month's rent per year).

You may also check the IRIF page about searching for housing.

Even though your monthly salary gets taxed before it is transferred to your bank account (prélèvement à la source), you still need to file a paper forms to declare your annual income.

Since your appointment usually starts in autumn, it means that you would have worked in France for only 4 months or less of that calendar year. You will still have to declare your income. Once you do this, you receive a “numéro fiscal”, which will allow you to do it online the next year and to perform most of the administrative tasks online with Franceconnect.

A personal liability insurance is nearly mandatory in France; for example you need one to get an office at IRIF. It generally comes along with housing insurance, which you will need to get an appartment.

Once you rent an appartment you will likely need to buy some housing insurance (assurance habitation). There are multiple such services you can find online (Lemonade has good rates, and is very user friendly). Depending on your lodging, prices start at around 10 EUR/month. However, please be careful about automatic renewals. Even if you move out, or just decide to change the insurance for a cheaper one, the old one might keep going and charging you every month. Normally, the insurance company is legally required to notify you by mail a few months in advance about the automatic renewal that occurs after 1 year. In practice, it may not happen, so you can use this argument in your favor.

If you decide to change your insurance, you must cancel the old one by sending a letter by mail “recommandé avec accusé de réception” stating your reasons, and providing the required proof (new insurance policy, moved out, etc). According to the French law, your new insurance company has to cancel your previous one.

For all matters that require mailing physical letters, consider using laposte.fr. It allows you to upload your documents online, and have them printed and mailed by the postal service. This also allows you to send the occasional “lettre recommandée avec accusé de réception” required to for various operations involving your bank or insurance.

Once you reach the point where you want to buy a property and settle in France, you might need to look into obtaining a loan.

In France it is standard to find a courtier, which is a person who collects documentation from you (payslips, tax documents, etc) and consults with various banks to find the best available rate. Their fees may vary a lot. However, in general you get better rates if you go through this path instead of trying to find a bank on your own.

At least one lab member had a very good experience with Pretto, which is an online courtage service. They turned out to be very professional, transparent, and reasonably priced compared to the alternatives.

Note that once you obtain the loan, the bank will also want to insure it. They will normally offer you a loan, but together by their own insurance (assurance prêt) which may end up being rather expensive. Do not worry about this. Just sign the contract, then seek a substitute for the insurance. The French law (loi Chatel) allows you to change it at any time within the first year since signing the contract, then once every year afterwards. At this point you can just buy the better priced insurance, then send a letter to the bank together with the required documentation so that they can substitute the old one.

Payslips (“bulletins de paie”) are provided only in electronic form on the ENSAP portal. To access this portal, you will need a permanent social security number. You can ask HR to send you a paper version of your payslips.

As soon as you get your permanent social security number, you will need to email HR so that they add it to their records. Please remind them that you would need access to ENSAP, since at that point you are supposed to stop receiving a physical payslip.