With a stable home, the card is only required to trade outside the town where you live or the town of your establishment. Several occupations are kept out of it, including commercial agents, sales representatives (VRP) and independent home-sales representatives.
Many people pay €30 for a card they do not need. You find out first whether yours is due, and only fill in the form afterwards.
Save your identity once: it will fill in the twelve forms. It stays on this device.
This is the question that decides the obligation. With a stable home, the law only covers activity carried out outside the town of your home or your main establishment. With no stable home, it covers any itinerant activity, wherever it takes place.
Everything happens on your device: the official form is filled in there, nobody receives your answers, not even us, and it all disappears with the tab.
Information verified on October 1, 2026. Document composed from the model published by the French authorities, and dated. It is not legal advice: you remain responsible for the accuracy of what you declare and sign.
The official pages where we read the rules and amounts applied here.
Article L. 123-29 of the commercial code covers trading outside the territory of the town where your home or main establishment is. Your own town's market therefore needs no card, even all year round. The next town does, and the declaration has to be made before you go there. The second paragraph of the same article sets one exception: with no stable home, the declaration is due wherever you trade, even in a single town.
Article R. 123-208-1 keeps them out of the declaration, and this is the question the paid websites never ask:
The card is renewed every four years. The window opens one month before the expiry date and closes two months after: after that you have to make a fresh application, with the full file. No reminder is sent, and many traders end up trading on an expired card.
Trading without having made the prior declaration costs a €750 fine. Not having your card on you, or letting it expire, costs €450. The card must be shown to officers on request, together with an identity document: keep it in the van or on the stall, not in a folder at home.
| Your application | The documents | The wait |
|---|---|---|
| First card, with the registration | Two passport photographs | 15 days to 1 month |
| First card, on its own | Photographs, identity document, registration certificate | 15 days to 1 month |
| Renewal | The same, plus an extract less than 3 months old | 15 days |
| Change | Extract less than 3 months old, proof of the change | 15 days |
The fee is €30, set by an order of 19 July 2019. If you have to start before the card arrives, ask for the provisional certificate: it lasts a month, and is handed back when the card is issued.
Awa sells her creations at her own town's market every Saturday, and a website tells her she needs a card.
She fills in the file, attaches her photographs and pays the €30.
The chamber issues the card, which she never had to apply for: she never left her own town.
The following year she is invited to a Christmas market thirty kilometres away. There, the card becomes compulsory.
Awa paid thirty euros and put a file together when nobody would have asked her for a card at her own town's market. She only needed it a year later, for the Christmas market.
Fill in the form here, sign it and send it to your chamber of commerce or trades.
Budget the €30 fee and two recent passport photographs.
Note the expiry date. The card lasts four years, and nothing will remind you.
Nothing to declare and nothing to pay. With a stable home, the law only covers activity outside your own town.
Your town's market stays open to you without a card, all year round.
Come back as soon as you plan to sell elsewhere. The declaration must be made before your first sale outside your own town.
No, if you have a stable home. The prior declaration then only covers activity carried out outside the town where your home or main establishment is. At your own town's market, nobody can demand a card.
Wherever you carry out an itinerant activity, even in a single town. The second paragraph of article L. 123-29 of the commercial code extends the prior declaration to anyone with no stable home, without the home-town exception. The occupations the regulations keep out stay out.
Thirty euros, and four years. Renewal is requested between one month before expiry and two months after. Beyond that, you have to make a first application again, with all its documents.
No. The commercial code keeps canvassers governed by specific rules out of the prior declaration, and it names independent home-sales representatives, along with sales representatives (VRP) and banking or financial canvassers. Commercial agents, newspaper street vendors, taxi operators and incidental rounds in bordering towns are kept out too.
Yes, with the provisional certificate provided for by the commercial code. It is requested at the same time as the card, lasts a month, and is handed back when the card arrives. Without it you have to wait: the declaration must be made before you start.
A €750 fine for trading without prior declaration. Having the card but leaving it at home, or not renewing it, costs €450. It must be shown on request, together with an identity document.
The paperwork is done. Next comes learning the craft.
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