Laurent has unearthed a great deal for his next vacation: a discounted ticket for two weeks in the Philippines.

Yes, but now he realizes that his passport has expired!

The trip being scheduled in two months, he calmly began the process of renewing the title.

Except that the slots available in the town hall of his district are in several months… And it is also the same thing around.

Luckily for this adopted Marseillais, he finally gets an appointment in a few days at Six-Fours-les-Plages, which he takes without hesitation even though the city is 1 hour away.

This misadventure, Laurent is far from being the only one to have experienced it.

For more than a year, the services dedicated to the management of identity documents have been saturated and it is necessary to go about it months in advance to obtain the precious sesame.

The post-Covid traffic jam

According to Home Office figures, the wait time for an ID renewal appointment was just 11.5 days on average in April 2021, when it had climbed 65 days in spring 2022!

Worse still, it could exceed 100 days in some departments.

In question, an unprecedented increase in requests of 20% in 2022 compared to 2019 according to the administration.

At the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, very many French people have indeed undertaken this type of approach, in a hurry to be able to leave again for a breath of fresh air outside national borders.

Result: it is the traffic jam of the files and each new period of school holidays encumbers the services concerned a little more.

To remedy this administrative jam, the government put in place, in May, an emergency plan to increase the slots in town hall and to prioritize the most urgent requests.

The objective: to process 50,000 additional files per week in order to reduce the waiting period to 30 days.

But despite a slight improvement in the situation, it still took around fifty days on average to obtain an appointment at the end of the year.

Accelerate the procedure

To unclog municipal services, the government is focusing above all on the autonomy of users.

First reflex: make your pre-request online, an optional but recommended procedure.

And it is on passport.ants.gouv.fr, the official portal of the National Agency for Secure Documents (ANTS), that this is happening.

This dedicated service allows you, in the space of ten minutes, to buy the necessary tax stamp (in the event of loss or theft), to complete your file (reason for the pre-request, marital status, address …) and pay the title.

Finally, you can make an appointment online with your town hall… if it has an adequate slot.

Indeed, this procedure does not exempt you from going to the physical counter.

On the other hand, the famous interview will be faster since it will only consist of finalizing your approach.

OUR “ADMINISTRATION” FILE

Faced with persistently long delays, ANTS also set up a specific search engine at the end of the year to view the time slots available in a certain geographical area, over a period of three months.

On rendezvouspasseport.ants.gouv.fr, you can search within a maximum radius of 60 km around your home in order to find the fastest date.

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Anticipate!

If these online services promise to help those who are comfortable with the Internet, anticipation remains the key to renewing your identity papers on time.

The Ministry of the Interior emphasizes this itself: "It is strongly recommended that you begin your procedures for renewing titles and make an appointment at the town hall six months before the expiry date of your document of identify ".

This is all the more important if you have a trip planned or if you are a student and are going to take an exam requiring you to present your identity document.

You will understand, if you have not done so yet, go and check the expiry date of your papers!

Remember that the passport is valid for 10 years, while the period of validity of the identity card depends on its period of issue and its model.

CNIs obtained before 2014 but valid on January 1 of that year have been extended to reach 15 years of validity, compared to 10 years for the new "bank card" format issued after this date.

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