# Getting a French passport in London nightmare



## philthompson23

Hi all,

my french wife has never had a French passport, she’s always traveled with her national identity card. She’s now trying to apply for a French passport online with the London French consulate and it’s a nightmare. We’ve been trying for two years and we get put in some que then it says to try back later.

does anyone have a clue / advice on what we can do here?


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## Bevdeforges

Based on the London consulate's website, it appears that getting a first passport will require her to make an appearance in person at the consulate. Where the bottleneck seems to be is for getting an appointment at the consulate. (And depending on where you live, there are the travel issues to resolve once you find a date.) There have been lots of articles in the press both here and overseas talking about the difficulty in getting an appointment with the consulate (or with the mairies here in France that process passport applications). 

But read through the material available on the consulate website. They acknowledge that things are taking 3 to 4 times longer than normal, due to the crush of applications. Other than that, you need to try early and often - appointments go online only for the next 60 days and they seem to "sell out" quickly. Sometimes you can "nab" an appointment by going online at odd hours and just hope you can grab an appointment someone else has just cancelled. But plenty of folks have found out that it's already too late to renew passports for their summer holidays. Getting a first passport as an adult makes things even trickier.


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## balthy

I got my first passport last year from the London consulate. You need to follow the links on the website to make an appointment and then turn up with all the required documentation. The passport took about 3 weeks to be issued, then you can collect anytime with no appointment. 

My case was more difficult because I was not born in France, I have a French mother so once the consulate agreed they would issue me with a passport (long story, took several months + help of a lawyer), the actual process for obtaining the passport was easy. Since your wife has a national ID card, you won't have same issues as me, only issue is to find available appointment. I made an appointment for about a month or so out but kept checking back and was lucky to find a slot in the next week, it is a case of trying to look for appointments now and again. Two years of trying without an outcome seems a bit odd.


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