Why the British come to live in France

There are no exact figures on how many British expats live in France, but what we can see here there are an awful lot of them. When we have our annual cocktail party, there are at least 40 Brits attending, all within a 50 km radius. The Guardian, British newspaper estimates that some 50.000 Brits buy property in France every year.

An other interesting statistic from the Sunday Times tells us that in 2005 42.000 Brits moved to France, but at the same time 30.000 Frenchman moved to the UK. According to the paper, most of the Brits were retired couples, while the French were young entrepreneurs, who moved to the UK mainly for economic reasons. Why? Well it takes only two days to set up a business in Britain, while one has to wait at least three months for the French bureaucracy to give you a business licence.

For us it is interesting to find out why France has such an appeal for Brits, because we made the same decision 12 years ago when we decided to move to France. The US travel magazine Living did a study and that seems to answer this questions. It took 191 countries, looked at the living costs, cultural offerings, leisure possibilities, economy, environment, freedom, health services, safety and climate. France came out as number one, the UK was 37-th.

Well we can confirm that when we arrived, real estate costs were lower here than in the US. The food, the wine, public travel and clothing was also a bargain. However, with the the dollar down (and I get my annuity in dollars), most of these got more expensive for Americans, but not for Brits. The air is extremely clean here, mostly thanks to the fact that close to 80% of electricity is generated by atomic power plants. The health services are number one in the world, according to the World Health Service report of 2004. When I was diagnosed for cancer, the doctor's first question was: do you have French health insurance? When I told him that I have a (I thought) very good American insurance, he informed me that the French insurance covers 100% of ALL costs related to my illness. So I applied for it and I received it in two weeks. I could hardly believe all the things it covered. Just two examples: A local nurse service which comes to my house every second day and when I had to go for radiation treatment 60 km-s away from here, every day for two months, it paid all the taxi bills for these daily trips. (it came to over 5.000 dollars),

And finally the climate. There is no humidity in the Summer and the evenings cool down, so there is no need for air conditioning. So far since we live here, the average yearly snowfall was one day, and we have sun nearly every day. The drawback is that there is very little rain and for the last three year we had an especially bad drought, so that we had to give up on lawns and the vegetable garden. But the relaxed rural living, with its weekly market and it's festivals surrounded by good friends, the beauty of the Cote d'Azure and the nearby Alps gives us enough pleasure to forget even the sometimes unpleasant Mistral wind.