Getting A residence card For Non-EU Spouse In France

[limey]

I am dual British / Irish nationality and my wife is Chinese. We have been married for 9 years and lived in the UK using the EEA Family Permit route to get my Wife into the UK. But in August 2012 we moved to France, bought a house here, and my Wife got a one year residence card (Carte du sejour) but that expired in Feb 2014.

Now we are in the process of renewing the residence card in France under the 2004/38/EC rules. My Wife is registered as self-employed here and pays taxes. Me, I am under the Self-Sufficient rules as I am semi-retired, in my mid 50s, have savings, investments and some rental income from the UK. But am not working here in France, thought may do later when my French improves. (Saying that I have been working extremely hard doing our house up!).

We submitted all our documents (income, savings, health-cover, etc..) to the Prefecture and they have granted my Wife a temporary 3 month visa for now. But they have now asked that I have all my income and savings documents translated into French. In France, this has to be done using an official translator and ends up costing €50 per A4 sheet.

Needless to say my Wife has been feeling a bit stressed by all of this and the delay is already causing problems elsewhere because official bodies want to see a valid Residence Card.

Q1: I know that I have sufficient saving and income to satisfy the EC freedom of movement rules. But does anyone know whether I am required to have all these income/savings documents translated into French. ie. Tenancy agreement for the rental income, saving, investments, etc.. As we did not have to do this when my wife got the initial one year residence card here in France. So what are the rules on this?

Q2: Also, how long is the EC residence card supposed to last for? I understood it should be 5 years. But the initial residence card only lasted for one year. But we are hoping that this next one will last longer than that!

Thanks for any responses.

[toofan]

HI according t directives RC as family member should be issued 5 years and this is a common practice , I read on forum before as well they issued card only for a year .

now about translation its very tricky as in Italy they demand any document which is not in Italian should be translated to Italian .

and same in UK HO require any document which is not in English like for instance its in French r in any other language should be translated into English .

its better the prefecture where you submitting documents to ask them what document you should submit with translation .and try to minimize to number of pages if every thing required to get translated to minimize the cost of translation.