{"id":25285,"date":"2024-05-15T12:17:19","date_gmt":"2024-05-15T16:17:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/?p=25285"},"modified":"2024-05-15T17:27:47","modified_gmt":"2024-05-15T21:27:47","slug":"france-wants-your-cash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/france-wants-your-cash\/","title":{"rendered":"France Wants Your Cash"},"content":{"rendered":"<h6><strong>Key Points<\/strong><\/h6>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>You must make a customs declaration when entering or leaving the EU with \u20ac10,000 or more in cash or its equivalent in other currencies &#8211; this rule has been around forever.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>But watch out for this gotcha in <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">France<\/span> &#8211; if you&#8217;re planning on bringing in cash over this threshold and leaving it on the aircraft, you need to <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">declare it in advance<\/span>, or else you might get fined.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Both reports we have received relate to LFPB\/Paris Le Bourget airport. It&#8217;s not yet clear whether this issue is just limited to this airport, or affects other airports in France.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>OPSGROUP member report<\/h4>\n<p><em><span style=\"background-color: #f2f2f0;\">On arrival at <strong>LFPB\/Paris Le Bourget<\/strong> recently, we were met by a team of customs officials who <strong>asked us if we carried aircraft cash on board.<\/strong> We were told that we should have declared any amount over \u20ac10,000.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"background-color: #f2f2f0;\">As we had not attempted to take any cash into the country we asked if we could file at that time. The answer was that we have to file before departure online and that failure to do so was counted as attempting to bring in undeclared cash from outside of the EU. <strong>Unaccompanied cash must be declared online before entry and before departure. <\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"background-color: #f2f2f0;\">There is no limit to the amount of cash that you can declare, and once declared any amount can be taken into the country and spent. I would imagine that there may be a requirement to account for any difference between the amount declared inbound and the amount declared outbound, but have not tested this. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"background-color: #f2f2f0;\"><strong>We were fined a substantial sum, put on a EU watchlist for 5 years and told that any repeat violations will be subject to a sliding scale of sanctions up to complete confiscation of the funds.<\/strong> We have flown in the area for many years, but have never been notified of the this rule.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<h4>ANOTHER member report<\/h4>\n<p><em><span style=\"background-color: #f2f2f0;\">We had Customs officials board our aircraft in <strong>LFPB\/Paris Le Bourget<\/strong> for a \u201croutine pre-departure check\u201d and they were<strong> exclusively focused on declared\/undeclared cash. <\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"background-color: #f2f2f0;\">We had not declared (we were not carrying anything close to the qualifying amounts of cash), so they <strong>asked questions about our onboard safe.<\/strong> They knew most Global models had one, and they knew exactly where it was. We never use it, so we didn\u2019t even take the key on the trip and were unable to open it for inspection. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"background-color: #f2f2f0;\">That made them suspicious, so we were delayed 20 minutes while they phoned supervisors to <strong>decide if we were grounded or not.<\/strong> They even discussed bringing in a team to <strong>physically break into the safe<\/strong> to verify contents, but supervisors decided to forego that option. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"background-color: #f2f2f0;\">They cautioned us to have the key with us next time we entered France. <strong>Needless to say, it is onboard now. <\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"background-color: #f2f2f0;\"><strong>Bottom line:<\/strong> They know about safes and want to inspect their contents. Be able to open it.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<h4>What are the rules?<\/h4>\n<p>These are all in <a href=\"https:\/\/eur-lex.europa.eu\/legal-content\/EN\/TXT\/PDF\/?uri=CELEX:32018R1672\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">EU Regulation 2018\/1672<\/a>, which got updated in 2021, and are basically as follows:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>You must lodge a cash declaration to customs when entering or leaving the EU with \u20ac10,000 or more in cash or its equivalent in other currencies (banknotes, coins, cheques, traveller cheques, promissory notes, money orders without a named beneficiary, and all manner of gold coins\/bars\/nuggets etc).<\/li>\n<li>If customs think you&#8217;re bringing in cash over this threshold in any kind of &#8220;unaccompanied way&#8221; they can tell you to lodge a &#8220;disclosure declaration&#8221; &#8211; which you have to have to then do within 30 days.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><strong>So, nothing about having to tell them in advance.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Even on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.douane.gouv.fr\/fiche\/obligation-declare-cash-securities-and-valuables\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">French customs website<\/a>, there&#8217;s <strong>no mention of having to declare or disclose anything in advance.<\/strong> It says you either do it on arrival, or use their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.douane.gouv.fr\/dalia\/Dalia.jsp\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">DALIA website<\/a> to declare it online.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.douane.gouv.fr\/fiche\/obligation-declare-cash-securities-and-valuables#:~:text=Where%20and%20when%20to%20file%20your%20declaration\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-25286\" src=\"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/french-customs-1024x267.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"700\" height=\"182\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/french-customs-1024x267.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/french-customs-300x78.jpg 300w, https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/french-customs-768x200.jpg 768w, https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/french-customs-1536x400.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/french-customs-2048x534.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<h4>How to make the declaration?<\/h4>\n<p>As of 2021, there&#8217;s now a standard form that the EU have published for this.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_25287\" style=\"width: 510px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/op.europa.eu\/en\/publication-detail\/-\/publication\/2736e514-b31b-11eb-8aca-01aa75ed71a1\/language-en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-25287\" class=\"wp-image-25287\" src=\"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/EU-Cash-Declaration-image-804x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"637\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/EU-Cash-Declaration-image-804x1024.jpg 804w, https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/EU-Cash-Declaration-image-236x300.jpg 236w, https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/EU-Cash-Declaration-image-768x978.jpg 768w, https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/EU-Cash-Declaration-image-1207x1536.jpg 1207w, https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/EU-Cash-Declaration-image.jpg 1604w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-25287\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Click for PDF.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>This is available in <a href=\"https:\/\/op.europa.eu\/en\/publication-detail\/-\/publication\/2736e514-b31b-11eb-8aca-01aa75ed71a1\/language-en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">other languages<\/a>, if you&#8217;re headed somewhere in the EU and they want a copy in something other than English.<\/p>\n<h4>Why the weird rule in France about having to do it in advance?<\/h4>\n<p>As far as we can tell, it&#8217;s an incorrect reading and application of the EU Regulation.<\/p>\n<p>Both reports we have received relate to <strong>LFPB\/Paris Le Bourget airport.<\/strong> It&#8217;s not yet clear whether this issue is just limited to this airport, or affects other airports in France. If you have experienced similar at LFPB or other airports in the country, please let us know: <a href=\"mailto:news@ops.group\">news@ops.group<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>We did reach out to some local agents at LFPB, one of whom told us that from their understanding the principle is to do the declaration online before arrival, or if you are already on ground &#8211; go spontaneously to the customs advising that you have something to declare before they make any check!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Key Points You must make a customs declaration when entering or leaving the EU with&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":25292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[44],"class_list":{"0":"post-25285","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-briefings","8":"tag-france"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25285"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25296,"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25285\/revisions\/25296"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}