Employee Relocation to France

For HR and mobility teams managing relocations to France, the challenge is not any individual move — it is the aggregate. Every employee who moves from the UAE to Paris or Lyon arrives at a new country with a new language, a new bureaucracy and a new city to navigate. If the move itself adds friction to that, the employee’s experience suffers before they have even started the job. Seemleius employee relocation to France is built to remove the friction from both sides: the employee gets a single, calm coordinator; the HR team gets the consistency and reporting it needs to manage the programme.

What makes France moves programme-worthy

Moving an employee to France is not the kind of task that can be handed off to a generic removals company. French customs has specific documentation requirements for imported personal effects; entitlements for the déménagement duty relief on household goods need to be claimed correctly through Cerfa form 10070; and the employee, often arriving in an unfamiliar country, needs more support than a tracking number. A well-run programme handles all of that before the employee notices it needs handling.

Work permit routes that drive the timeline

For UAE-based employees coming to France as non-EU nationals, the move usually runs on one of three permit routes, each with its own timeline. The Passeport Talent is the headline pathway — a multi-year permit covering qualified employees, researchers, intra-company senior roles, founders and a list of recognised skill categories; it is the smoothest option when the role and salary qualify. The Intra-Company Transfer (ICT) permit covers employees moving within a multinational group for up to three years and runs through the salarié détaché ICT framework. The EU Blue Card covers highly qualified employees against a salary threshold and gives a route into wider EU mobility after the initial residence. We do not file these — immigration counsel does — but we plan the household move and the family arrival around the permit timetable, because a household shipment that arrives before residence is confirmed creates a customs problem that is entirely avoidable with the right sequencing.

Settling-in admin: the first six weeks

Once an employee is in France, the practical sequence we brief them on covers the essentials. The OFII visa validation closes the loop on the long-stay visa within three months of arrival. The carte de séjour application follows for the formal residence document. A French social security number (numéro de sécurité sociale) registration starts the healthcare clock, attached to the local CPAM office. Banking is straightforward once a confirmed French address and proof of income are in place. Families with children need to look at school enrolment cycles — September is the main intake, with smaller January and Easter windows for international schools. And families on lower-to-mid salaries should know about CAF housing aid (Aide Personnalisée au Logement), which is one of the more useful benefits and routinely missed by new arrivals. None of this is our job to file — but it is our job to brief the employee on the order, so they are not learning the French administrative system from scratch while also trying to start a new role.

What the programme covers

How it works

1. Align the programme. We map to your mobility policy once — entitlements, documentation standards, reporting format, freight-mode rules — and every France move runs to those rules.
2. Initiate a move. HR refers the employee; we survey, prepare the Cerfa 10070 transfer-of-residence dossier and return a policy-checked quote.
3. Manage the relocation. Packing, sea or air freight (Jebel Ali to Le Havre or Marseille for sea, DXB to CDG/ORY/LYS/NCE/MRS for air), EU import clearance and delivery are handled for the employee, with HR updated at each milestone.
4. Report. Consistent documentation and status reporting, every time, for every move — one consolidated view across the programme.

Whether you are moving two people a year to Paris or running a sustained programme for a business with a growing French presence, the service is built to scale without losing consistency. Talk to us and we will build the programme to fit your policy.