France Raised the Bar for Citizenship – Anglo-Americans Are Paying the Price

Thousands of British and American expats living in France have spent years, sometimes decades, building lives there, paying taxes, integrating into communities.

Now, a sweeping overhaul of French citizenship and residency law is putting their dreams of a French passport further out of reach than ever. Many are calling it deeply unfair.

France’s 2024 comprehensive immigration law amended integration pathways and strengthened requirements for obtaining certain residence permits and citizenship. The full implementation went into effect on January 1 of this year.

The changes hit on multiple fronts at once. One of the most significant shifts is the language proficiency requirement, which has been raised from B1 to B2 for citizenship applicants.

B2 is considered upper-intermediate, the level where you can follow a complex argument, debate a topic fluently, and understand nuanced spoken French. It’s a significant jump.

As Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau put it: “Becoming French must be earned, and we must be very, very demanding.”

On top of the language test, foreigners must also now pass a new civic exam to obtain a multi-year residence card or naturalization.

The test is a 40-question multiple-choice questionnaire lasting up to 45 minutes, covering the principles of the Republic, institutions, rights and duties, and France’s place in Europe. The passing threshold is set at 80% correct answers.

The Income Problem Nobody Saw Coming

The language and civic tests grabbed the headlines, but there’s a second wave of changes that has blindsided retirees and people living off foreign pensions.

Changes to income requirements were introduced by ministerial memo in May 2025, and are being applied retrospectively. That means people who had already begun their applications under the old rules suddenly found themselves judged by new ones.

Applicants must now show stable, French-source income – typically at least SMIC, which is the French minimum wage of €1,802 per month in 2025.

Foreign-source income or pensions are increasingly being rejected as insufficient proof of professional integration.

This is where it gets particularly brutal for British and American retirees. Many of them moved to France legally, bought property, and live comfortably on UK state pensions, private pensions, or US Social Security.

That income, regardless of how stable it is, now risks being dismissed outright. There have been several reported cases of British retirees having their naturalization rejected on these grounds.

Anecdotally, all the people known to have appealed against rejection based on the new income requirements have failed in their applications.

Prefectures Are No Longer Using Discretion

One of the quieter but most consequential changes is that local officers no longer have the flexibility they once had.

Préfecture staff are no longer allowed to use their discretion when it comes to applications by people who have retired to France.

Previously, an officer could look at someone’s full picture including their community ties, years of residence, French-speaking spouse, property ownership etc, and make a human judgment call. That’s gone.

Outgoing Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau instructed prefectures to apply the criteria more strictly, which resulted in a 28% reduction in naturalizations granted in 2024.

The processing system also varies wildly depending on where you live in France. Waiting times vary hugely between prefectures, and applications can hover at a particular stage for a long time before moving forward.

Someone in Paris might wait months longer than someone in Bordeaux for the exact same type of application.

Why Anglo-Americans Feel Singled Out

The changes aren’t specifically aimed at Americans or Brits, they apply to all foreign nationals. But several features of the new rules land disproportionately on English-speaking expats.

First, the language bar. Many long-term British and American residents in France, particularly older ones who moved post-retirement, speak functional French but not upper-intermediate B2 French.

They can order at a restaurant, chat with neighbors, handle daily life, but formal written and oral exams at B2 level are a different challenge entirely. Even some native French speakers struggle to pass the formal test.

Second, the income source issue. Americans and Brits are more likely than many other expat groups to be living on foreign-source pensions rather than French employment income. They often move to France for the lifestyle after building careers elsewhere. The new rules effectively penalize that life choice.

Third, the retroactive application of the income memo. For migrants already eligible under the previous framework, the 2025 changes created a clear time pressure:

Those who filed complete applications before December 31 2025 had a real chance of being assessed under the more flexible pre-2026 rules.

Those who didn’t make that deadline, or whose applications were slow-walked through the system, lost that window.

The Bigger Picture

The French government’s position is that naturalization is not a right but a sovereign decision. From that angle, France is entitled to set whatever bar it likes.

But critics argue the implementation has been chaotic and unfair – rules applied mid-application, discretion stripped from local officers, income sources dismissed without looking at the full financial picture, and a civic exam that was rushed into existence with little preparation time for applicants.

The French reforms have unfolded in two waves: a largely invisible tightening in 2025, where administrative practice became tougher, followed by the much more visible January 2026 changes bringing higher language requirements and a formal civic exam as legal prerequisites.

For the British retiree who moved to the Dordogne in 2012, paid French taxes for over a decade, and applied for citizenship only to be told their UK pension doesn’t count, the sentiment is pretty straightforward: very unfair.