France is a popular destination from the UAE for senior professionals, retirees with French ties and families relocating for international school placements. The move logistics are well understood — household goods travel by sea to Le Havre, Marseille or Fos-sur-Mer. The part that catches new arrivals is the residency paperwork sequence at OFII and the prefecture, which is best treated as its own project running in parallel with the shipment.
OFII and the residence formalities
If you arrive on a long-stay visa, the residence formalities that follow, including any steps with OFII (the Office français de l'immigration et de l'intégration), have their own deadlines, so follow the current instructions on the official France-Visas and service-public.gouv.fr sites.
What you should bring out of the UAE in your hand luggage
The single most common mistake we see is families packing their core documents into the sea consignment because it feels safer there. It is not. The French authorities, a landlord or a school may ask for originals long before your container clears Le Havre. Carry the following in cabin baggage from DXB:
- Marriage certificate
- Birth certificates for each accompanying child
- Original university degree(s), where your employer requires them
- Twelve months of UAE bank statements, original or e-stamped
- Tenancy contract or property title in France, scanned and printed
- Medical history summary, translated into French
Carte de Séjour: check the official timings
Applications for the Carte de Séjour itself are handled by the French authorities, through the Interior Ministry's ANEF online platform or the prefecture, and they set the deadlines and processing times, so check them there before you book any trips back to the UAE.
The household move runs alongside, not after
The freight does not wait for OFII. We typically load a 20-foot or shared consolidation in Dubai and complete Mirsal 2 export clearance; since the Strait of Hormuz closed to commercial shipping in February 2026, the container then travels by road to a port beyond the strait, such as Khor Fakkan or Fujairah on the UAE's east coast or Sohar in Oman, and sails from there to Le Havre, with routing and dates confirmed at the survey. Your container can arrive while you are still on your long-stay visa, before the Carte de Séjour has been issued — this is fine for customs, which asks for proof that you are settling in France, such as an employment contract, rather than the eventual permit.
French customs needs Cerfa form 10070*03, the declaration for duty-free entry of personal property from outside the EU, with a detailed inventory — valued, dated and signed — in two copies. The benefit of doing this correctly is that household goods you have owned and used for at least six months come in duty- and VAT-free, provided you have lived outside the EU for at least twelve months. Get the inventory wrong and items can be flagged as imports liable for 20 percent TVA — an avoidable shock on a family move.
Healthcare and the social security number
Once your residence status is in order, you can apply for a French social security number with CPAM. The number can take several months to issue, which means a stretch when you are technically resident but cannot register with a general practitioner under the public scheme. Most families we move bridge this with private French health insurance for the first six to twelve months. Reimbursement from CPAM is retroactive once your number arrives, so keep every receipt.
School enrolment in parallel
If your move is for an international school place — Lycée International, EIB, BISP, IS Toulouse — admissions cycles in France close earlier than in the UAE. Many schools finalise September intake by March or April. A late June arrival from Dubai for September start is workable only if school applications were filed in February. If your shipment is on the water but the school place is not confirmed, that is a problem worth flagging early.
Our role through the sequence
We coordinate the freight and prepare the customs file and inventory in Dubai; clearance in France and the unpack at destination are handled by our destination partner, with your coordinator as the single point of contact. We do not handle your residence formalities — those are your personal steps — but our coordinators flag what you need to have in hand when, so the residency timeline does not collide with the moving truck arriving at your door in Neuilly or Saint-Germain. A fifteen-minute scoping call before either project starts is usually enough to lay the dependencies out clearly.
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