Since France is one of the greatest business hubs, surely if you are a foreign national you will consider to invest in cities like Paris and Lyon. Therefore, as you plot a move to secure a business opportunity, you will ask yourself various questions. One of the questions you will ask yourself is if you will need a visa to run a business in France. Well, there are quite a number of things that you need to put into consideration before you decide to invest as well as a visa that you will need.

Which Visa do I need to start a business in France?

If you are planning on becoming a French resident at the same time running your business. Surely you need to be aware of the visa or the titre de sejour will not permit you to start a business. There are four resident permits that might be very much compatible with the business project that you might want to pursue.

Visa commerçant

This is a visa for trading or any form of business activity you want to do in France. This visa is mostly requested by business people who are in to start a business in France. Since it is the Visa commerçant, it can be adapted to any business that include; president, manager and general manager.

Moreover, this will also work for any form of business that include, auto-entrepreneur or even enterprise individuelle. As if that is not enough, there is another version that you can obtain for professional liberale.

Visa compétences et talents

Critical skills are also needed in France. And for that reason, the government has put in place mechanism to make sure that they provide skills and talents visa to foreign citizens and French citizens as well.

This is a very interesting visa especially for those who have a special talent and skill. Moreover, this visa is mainly used for high tech companies that are after a special talent. Since France is trying to attract a lot of skilled people, they have put in place a new version of this visa which was launched in 2017. This was mainly released for technology companies that are looking for new innovative ideas.

However, the new version is called the competences et talents French Tech, both of these visas are available to last for 4 years once they are approved.

Carte de résident de 10 ans

This is a residential card of 10 years; it will enable you to exercise any form of professional activities be it employed or self-employed. As much as the years on this permit are actually interesting, keep in mind that it is not easy to get.

In the event that you already have a Visa that include tourism or student visa. Surely you will need to apply for another visa if you want to start a business in any of the cities in France.

Moreover, there are some student visa that will permit you to start business soon after your studies. But the visa must have a mention on that option whatsoever.