Visitor Visa and Remote Work from France: What the 23 June 2026 Ministerial Answer Actually Says (and What It Doesn't)

A written question put to the French Interior Minister, answered on 23 June 2026, has been making the rounds among Americans planning a move to France. The reading circulating online is reassuring and tidy: "I can live in France on a visitor visa and keep working for my U.S. employer, or run my LLC from Nice, with nothing to declare here."

It's a comforting summary. It's also wrong, or at least dangerously incomplete. Because the comfort comes from confusing two questions that French law keeps strictly apart: can you stay? and do you owe anything while you stay?

What the question was about

Deputy François Gernigon asked the Minister to clear up a real contradiction. Article L. 426-20 of the immigration code bars visitor-permit holders from carrying out "any professional activity" in France. But it never says whether remote work for a foreign employer counts.

Two parts of the administration had been saying opposite things. Consulates and prefectures treat foreign remote work as compatible with the visitor status, on the logic that the ban exists to protect the French labour market; they even accept foreign pay slips as proof of resources for visas and renewals. Meanwhile, the tax administration had told The Local France by email that an activity is deemed carried out in France the moment it is physically performed there, regardless of where the employer or clients sit.

So Gernigon asked, in substance: which is it, and what will the Government do to harmonise the positions?

What the Minister actually answered

The answer is worth reading closely, because it is clearer than people give it credit for, and more limited.

The Minister's reasoning runs on residence law and nothing else. A permit "with a professional purpose" implies an activity integrated into the French economy, the French market. A foreign national who lives in France but does not meet those criteria, who stays paid in their home country and pays tax there, should instead hold a temporary "visitor" card. And, crucially: a third-country national who is not employed in France and does not work for a company located on French territory, but works remotely for a foreign-law employer, "must be considered non-active under French law."

Read in context, that is genuinely useful. It confirms that this profile does not face an obstacle at the visa or renewal stage on that ground alone. You won't be refused a visitor card simply because you log into a foreign employer's systems from your French living room, and you won't be able to convert that into a self-employed or profession libérale permit either, precisely because you're treated as non-active.

So for the narrow question asked, residence security, the answer is reassuring. Fine.

What the answer does not address

Here is where the online summaries go off the rails.

The Minister answers only the residence question, because that is the only question that was put to him. He says nothing about social security. He says nothing about whether the foreign company itself has obligations in France. He doesn't even fully engage with the tax administration's position, which sits uneasily next to his own and was the very reason the question was asked.

The phrase doing the heavy lifting in every optimistic post is "non-active under French law." But that is a residence-law characterisation. It describes how the prefecture should treat you for the purpose of issuing a permit. It is not a social-security ruling, and it is not a tax ruling. "No problem at renewal" does not mean "no obligations in France." Those are two different questions, and they are being merged constantly.

The case the answer quietly ignores

The Minister's scenario is the tidy one: an employee who stays on a foreign payroll, paid abroad, taxed abroad. That person exists, but in my practice they are the minority.

The far more common situation, the one that walks into my office in Nice, is different. An American sells the house, moves to France, and keeps an LLC in the United States, working from France for U.S. clients. They were told, often by an immigration adviser, that this is fine on a visitor visa.

On the residence side, perhaps. The consulate may never look behind the pay slips to the economic reality of where the work is actually performed. But "the prefecture didn't ask" is not the same as "you are compliant."

The moment you physically perform your work from France, you are in principle within scope of the French social security system, regardless of where your company or your clients sit. Running a U.S. LLC from your kitchen table in France is, in substance, carrying out an activity in France. That can mean registering here, paying social contributions here, and, where there's a genuine foreign employer in the picture, that employer facing its own obligations: French registration, French payroll, French contributions.

None of this is resolved by a residence-permit answer. The consulate accepting your foreign pay slips at the visa stage settles neither your social-security position nor your company's. The two systems are not talking to each other, and the ministerial answer does nothing to make them.

Where this leaves you

If you are a salaried employee staying on a foreign payroll, paid and taxed at home, the answer is genuinely good news for your residence permit, and you can plan around it.

If you are running your own LLC or company and working from France for that company, treat the optimistic reading with real suspicion. "It's compatible with a visitor visa" answers a question you weren't really asking. The harder questions, social security, the company's exposure, your actual tax residence, sit entirely outside what the Minister addressed.

The honest takeaway is unglamorous: a residence answer is a residence answer. Before you sell the house and cross the Atlantic on the strength of an online summary, have the whole picture looked at, not just the visa.