How Do You Move to France with a Pet? Entry Rules & Required Paperwork

A surprising number of relocation plans nearly stall over a dog. Not because the move itself falls apart, but because the apartment search does. French law is actually on your side when it comes to keeping a pet, yet expat families, diplomats, senior executives, entrepreneurs, and American or British nationals moving to Paris all report the same friction: a pet adds weight to an already competitive search.

This guide separates what the law says from what actually happens once you are competing for an apartment in central Paris. It covers what your pet needs before it can enter France, what your lease can and cannot say about keeping it, and how to put together a rental file that does not let a dog or cat become the reason you lose a good apartment.

Whether you are relocating with children, managing a diplomatic posting, running a company, or simply trying to bring your cat along from New York or London, the sections below are written with your situation in mind, not a generic expat profile.

France follows the same European Union framework for pets arriving from outside the bloc, regardless of which country you are flying from. The real risk is not the rules themselves. It is the order in which you complete them.

1. Get your pet's paperwork in the right order

Three documents need to line up correctly before your pet can travel. The microchip comes first. It needs to meet the ISO 11784 or 11785 standard, and it must go in before or on the same day as the rabies vaccination, never after.

The rabies shot has to be your pet's primary vaccination, followed by a mandatory 21 day wait before travel. The final document is an official EU health certificate, completed by an accredited vet and endorsed by your country's agricultural authority (the USDA, for American pet owners). It is only valid for 10 days from the date it is signed.

This sequencing detail trips up more people than the paperwork itself does. Get the order wrong, even by a day, and you may need to restart the rabies waiting period from scratch.

If you are British, there is a newer wrinkle worth knowing about. Since 22 April 2026, an EU pet passport is no longer accepted for residents of Great Britain entering the EU. You now need a fresh Animal Health Certificate from an officially authorised vet before every trip, and the cost typically runs between £100 and £450 depending on the clinic. This is a real change, not a rumour, and it has caught out plenty of long-time second home owners who got used to the old passport system.

1. Check the breed rules before you book anything

France splits dangerous dog breeds into two categories, and the difference matters more than most pet owners expect. Category 1 dogs, those without a recognised pedigree, including pitbull type and Tosa type breeds, cannot be brought into the country at all. Category 2 dogs, which do have a pedigree, are allowed in but come with real conditions: registration at the town hall, a behavioural evaluation, mandatory liability insurance, and a muzzle and leash requirement in public.

Mixed breed dogs deserve a second look here too. A dog that simply resembles a banned type can be denied entry at the border, even without paperwork confirming the breed one way or another (this is rare, but it does happen, and it is not worth finding out at customs).

1. Plan around your pet's size and the airline's rules

Most airlines will let a small pet, generally under 15 to 20 pounds including the carrier, travel in the cabin with you. Anything larger needs to go in the climate-controlled cargo hold instead.

Airline policies vary more than people assume, from seasonal heat embargoes to carrier dimension limits to a cap on how many animals can travel per flight. Confirm directly with your airline rather than relying on a general rule of thumb, since this is exactly the kind of detail that differs by route.

Once you land, you will need to declare your pet at customs. And if you plan to stay more than three months, which describes almost everyone signing a lease rather than visiting, French regulations require you to register your pet with I-CAD (Identification des Carnivores Domestiques) through a French vet, within the first 8 days of arrival. That three month mark is worth remembering, because it is roughly the same point where your housing situation stops being temporary and starts being a real lease, which is exactly where the next question becomes far more important than any of the paperwork above.

A clause banning pets from a standard residential lease in France carries no legal weight. But three real exceptions apply to exactly the kind of housing many relocating clients end up signing, so the full picture is more layered than that one sentence suggests.

What French law actually says

Article 10 of the law of 9 July 1970, reinforced by the law of 6 July 1989, states that any lease clause forbidding a tenant from keeping a domestic animal is void, as long as the animal causes no damage to the property and no disturbance to other residents. The only standing exception covers category 1 and category 2 dangerous dog breeds, which a landlord can lawfully exclude by clause.

That is the headline rule, and it holds up across the large majority of rental situations in Paris.

Why a civil code lease changes the picture

Diplomats, embassy staff, and corporate executives often sign a different kind of lease entirely. A civil code lease (bail de droit commun) applies to non-primary residence housing, leases signed by a legal entity rather than an individual, secondary residences, and a fair number of diplomatic or executive placements. It generally sits outside the 1989 law's protections.

In practice, this means the rule above cannot be assumed to apply automatically. Not every landlord will test this in practice, but the safer approach is a clause-by-clause review of the actual lease in front of you, rather than relying on the general rule.

Furnished, unfurnished, or seasonal: does it matter

A furnished lease used as your primary residence carries the same pet protection as an unfurnished one, since the 2014 loi ALUR reform extended the 1989 law's protections to furnished primary residence leases. A short-term seasonal rental, the kind typically booked through a tourism platform, sits in a different category altogether and is explicitly excluded from that protection.

This distinction matters most if you are bridging the gap with a serviced apartment while your permanent lease search continues, which is more common than it sounds, since plenty of relocating families and executives do exactly this for the first month or two.

Why renting with a pet still feels harder than the law suggests

The law protects you, but Paris's rental market does not always cooperate. Vacancy rates in the city sit around 1 to 2 percent, and available listings remain well below pre-pandemic levels. That leaves a landlord plenty of room to quietly favour a non-pet applicant without ever invoking a clause that would not hold up anyway.

American renters tend to feel this gap the most. Coming from a market where the large majority of listings welcome pets by default, the contrast with Paris can feel jarring even when nothing illegal is happening. The honest answer is that you can be legally protected and still face real competition at the same time, and both of those things are true here.

Treat your pet as one more line in an already strong file, not as something to apologise for or hide.

Step 1: Lead with a complete file, not a confession

Mention the pet briefly and factually in your application rather than leaving it out and hoping it does not come up. A landlord reviewing dozens of files reads a complete, upfront application as a sign of a reliable tenant, and an incomplete one as a small red flag, regardless of what that gap actually contains.

Pair the pet mention with the rest of a strong dossier locataire: a guarantor solution, proof of stable income, and a reference from a previous landlord if you have one. The pet is rarely the reason a file gets rejected. An incomplete file is.

Step 2: Show proof your pet will not be a liability

A vaccination record helps. A short reference from a past landlord confirming no damage history helps even more, if you can get one. It is also worth mentioning your renter's liability insurance (assurance habitation), since it typically already covers pet-related damage, and most landlords are simply unaware that tenants carry it.

If you are wondering whether to volunteer all of this upfront or wait to be asked, volunteer it. A landlord who has to ask for reassurance has already started to hesitate.

Step 3: A note for diplomats, executives, and entrepreneurs

If you are relocating under a diplomatic posting or a corporate package, check with HR or the relocation department before paying for AHC certificates, pet shipping, or I-CAD registration out of pocket. These costs are often already covered and simply need to be claimed correctly.

For entrepreneurs and the self-employed, the harder part of a rental file is usually proving stable income, not the pet. Get that documentation sorted early, since a weak income file can quietly get blamed on the pet when the pet was never the real issue.

Off-market access matters more for pet owners than for almost any other tenant profile, because the apartments with an existing track record of welcoming pets rarely make it to public listing sites at all.

Relocation in Paris also manages properties directly for a network of landlords across the city, which means the team often knows in advance which owners are genuinely open to pets and which are not, well before a listing goes public on Seloger or LeBonCoin. The accommodation search service covers property search, off-market access, and dossier preparation through the Accompagné and Confié packages, with Confié extending into a full search-to-key-handover service for clients who want every step managed on their behalf.

Either way, the pet conversation happens early in the search, rather than after you have already fallen for an apartment that was never going to work out.

Not every green space in Paris welcomes dogs, so the neighbourhood you choose can matter as much as the apartment itself if you are relocating with a pet.

Parks where dogs can run off the leash

Bois de Boulogne, on the edge of the 16th arrondissement, and Bois de Vincennes, in the 12th, both offer large off-leash areas, which is rare inside the city. Parc des Buttes-Chaumont in the 19th allows leashed dogs throughout, and the eastern side of the Jardin du Luxembourg in the 6th has a dog-friendly path most first-time visitors never notice.

Leash rules in Paris are stricter than what many American and British pet owners are used to, so check the local rules before assuming a park works the same way the one back home did.

Choosing a neighbourhood with children and pets in mind

For families relocating with children, the apartment search rarely comes down to the pet alone. Proximity to a park, a manageable school commute, and a quiet residential street tend to matter more than the postal code itself. A neighbourhood that works well for a dog often works well for a family routine more broadly, since both depend on safe streets and nearby outdoor space.