In the early weeks of this year, France introduced one of the most significant overhauls in decades to the rules governing access to French citizenship.
Not only did the changes aim to ensure deeper linguistic and civic integration for foreign residents seeking naturalisation, it also toughened how income from abroad is treated in the income test.
A ministerial circular issued in May 2025 and fully applied from the start of 2026 instructs prefectures to assess applicants’ income very strictly. Applicants must now show five consecutive years of stable, sufficient earnings, largely from French sources, and usually secured via:
A permanent employment contract (contrat à durée indéterminée, or CDI) valid for at least 12 months when the dossier is reviewed, or
A series of fixed‑term contracts (CDD) totalling at least 24 months over the review period.
Crucially, the circular specifies that income paid from abroad — such as pensions, investment dividends or salaries for remote work — along with most social benefits, should generally not count toward the economic integration requirement, unless exceptional circumstances apply.
The prefectures’ strict application of these eligibility criteria has already had dramatic effects: many applications are being rejected outright at the first pass if they fail to meet the French‑earned income test, with little room for supplementary documentation or explanations.
Among the groups most affected by the new income rules are retirees who live in France and receive most of their income in the form of a foreign pension. For them, demonstrating a positive French sourced income test is almost impossible.
Several such applicants have reported receiving refusals on the basis that they do not satisfy the “French‑sourced income” criterion — despite years of residence in France, payment of French taxes, and social and familial ties to the country they call home.
In response to mounting complaints, the French authorities have begun to clarify that exceptions — albeit narrow and individually assessed — may be made for retiree applicants whose income comes predominantly from overseas and who would not normally be able to demonstrate that most of their income was of French origin.
An interior ministry spokesperson stated to us that the possibility of exemptions exists but stressed that each case must be justified individually and that clear criteria have not always been communicated to applicants.
This acknowledgement follows sympathetic remarks recently by a government minister that the administrative doctrine needed to be change, as well as questions in the Senate about the policy.
One of the key factors that may have influenced this review is the legal context as naturalisation statutes in the French Civil Code do not explicitly restrict acceptable income to French‑sourced earnings. The risk of legal challenge is, therefore, high.
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