To Refuse Her Ten-Year Residence Card, the Prefecture Applies the Agreement with Tunisia to This Moroccan Woman…
A Moroccan woman who has lived in France since 2016 was refused a ten-year resident card on the basis of the Franco-Tunisian agreement. The prefecture subsequently corrected its mistake and refused her a second time. The courts have just annulled both decisions.
The case was decided on August 17 by the Besançon Administrative Court, according to the decision published by Doctrine. Born in 1996, the Moroccan woman arrived in France in September 2016 with a student visa. After several residence permits, she has held a multi-year card since March 2022, valid until March 2026.
On July 9, 2024, she applied for a ten-year resident card under the 1987 Franco-Moroccan agreement. The Doubs prefect refused on February 20, 2025. However, in its decision, the administration relied on Article 3 of the Franco-Tunisian agreement of March 17, 1988.
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For the court, the error was obvious: the applicant is Moroccan, and the provisions applicable to Tunisian nationals therefore could not be invoked against her. The first refusal was annulled for an error of law.
The Prefecture Corrects Its Error… and Refuses Again
The administration did not stop there, however. On April 17, 2025, it withdrew its first decision and replaced it with a new refusal, this time based on the correct text, the Franco-Moroccan agreement.
The reason changed: the prefecture now considered that the Moroccan woman’s resources were not sufficiently stable and adequate. But the court found that the decision did not even explain precisely why her income posed a problem.
The case file showed above all that she had been working full-time on a permanent contract since October 2019. Her professional income amounted to 23 110 euros in 2022, 22 785 euros in 2023 and 24 218 euros in 2024. By the end of July 2025, she had already received 12 518 euros net since the beginning of the year.
Her husband also works. He had held a contract since September 2024 and received, among other amounts, 1 587 euros net in April 2025.
For the judges, these elements were sufficient to establish that the Moroccan woman met the conditions relating to her professional activity and means of subsistence provided for by the Franco-Moroccan agreement. The second refusal was therefore also annulled.
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This time, the courts did not simply ask the prefecture to review the case. They ordered it to issue the Moroccan woman a ten-year resident card within two months, unless her situation changed.
The state must also pay 1 000 euros to the applicant for the first proceedings and 500 euros to her lawyer for the second. In just a few months, the prefecture therefore refused the same card twice: first by applying the agreement with Tunisia to a Moroccan woman, then by deeming insufficient income that the court ultimately considered compliant with the required conditions.
