Temporary Protection and French Citizenship
Does temporary protection count toward the five years of residence required for French citizenship, and why an APS hardly proves stable residence in France.
Living in France for five years is not enough to obtain French citizenship. Applicants must prove their integration, and their residence in France must be stable and permanent.
This means that the centre of their personal and professional interests is in France and that they intend to live there permanently.
Temporary protection raises a question: does this status show that residence in France is stable?
Temporary protection is a provisional European mechanism. In France, it takes the form of a provisional residence authorisation (APS), renewed every six months.
The mechanism was created so that people can stay in the European Union while the danger in their country persists, and return once that situation ends.
For this reason, temporary protection alone makes it hard to show that a person has chosen France as a stable, permanent home and moved the centre of their interests there.
So far, the French state has not taken an official position on whether time spent under temporary protection counts toward the five years of residence required for naturalisation.
Even if this period is counted later, applicants will still have to show, when they file for citizenship, that their situation in France is stable and that the centre of their personal and professional interests is there.
A residence permit that matches a person’s situation confirms that France has become their permanent place of residence. Moving from temporary protection to a residence permit therefore matters for those who plan to apply for French citizenship.