One of the things that keeps coming up in the “Moving to France” books is the shock of the author (almost invariably an Englishman) when he comes up against French bureaucracy.
We are going through one of our first encounters with French red tape at the moment.

We discovered from our Irish insurance company that they were only prepared to continue to insure our car for six months in France, thereafter we would have to be insured with a French company.
Since our bank already have organised the insurance of our house we went to them and our charming young banker gave us a quotation for comprehensive insurance which would be identical to our Irish one and within a fiver of the annual cost.
One sting in the tail was that within six weeks we would have to re-register our car in France.
We called to the sub prefecture in Beziers and got the long list of papers which we would need for this re-registration.
Among the mass of paper which we had to get was the certificate that the car had passed the French version of the Irish NCT (British MOT) test.

Then all of our ex-pat friends started to tell us about the difficulties therein.
The principal difficulty seemed to be with then beam direction of the car lights.
Our various ex-pat friends gave us various reports as to how this would best be organised.
One Scotsman told us that he had had to pay €600 and completely change the headlights in his Toyota , another, having been assured by her garage that having pasted on holiday deflectors would be sufficient, was sent away to get her lights changed also.

Síle insisted (against my judgment) that the only way we were going to find out what exactly needed doing was to go for the test and then just do what the man said.
That decided we went to the local Control Technique to get it done.
This does seem to be a much more informal test than the Irish one, no queuing or booking necessary but, as it takes much the same time, I imagine it is just as thorough.

Anyway we passed, he gave us a list of jobs which we should get done soon (replace one of the bulbs on the back numberplate etc.) but said that none of those would stop us passing.
Sile said to Monsieur “But what about the lights ?”
“They are perfect,” he said.
So now we are much relieved, richer, but still confused.
Is it possible that our Renault Megane sensed that it was back on French soil and adjusted its beams accordingly?

So now, once we have got:

A certificate of conformity from Renault England, ( Don’t ask)
A photo copy of my passport,
A copy of my driving licence,
A copy of the Irish Bill of Sale,
A current utility bill,
The original registration certificate of the car,
A vat tax clearance certificate for the car (available in St. Pons)
The pass certificate from the Control Technique,
And completed the long and complicated form (our French neighbour Dani helped us fill it in)
Then:
we can present ourselves to the Sub Prefecture
during the hours for Etrangers
(the last time we arrived at the time not for Etrangers but Madame, after a repremand, relented and gave us the form anyway)
and acquire a French number plate.

I’ll let you know how we get on.