We Took the New French Civics Exam... Here’s What Happened

There’s a brand new civics exam in France, and if you’re applying for naturalization, a multi-year renewal, or a 10-year card, it now applies to you.

It just rolled out. It’s 40 questions. You need 80% to pass. And no one really knew what to expect.

So we decided to take it ourselves.

In this episode, we walk through our experience sitting the highest-level version of the exam for naturalization. We talk about what surprised us, what felt straightforward, what was unexpectedly tricky, and how sophisticated the French language level actually is. We also put Daniel in the hot seat to see whether he would pass on the spot.

The exam isn’t impossible, but it’s not something to treat casually either. Some questions test core republican principles. Others test history, institutions, and rights in ways that require real comprehension, not just memorization.

If you’re preparing for naturalization or wondering how serious this new requirement is, this episode will give you clarity and perspective from the inside.

As always, our team is here to help you prepare, not just legally, but practically.

Transcript

Speaker: There's a brand new civics exam that you have to take in France for naturalization, for multi-year renewals, and for the 10 year card. It's a big mystery to everybody. It's just rolled out this month and nobody really knows what's on the test. It's 40 questions that we're about 40 minutes. You need to pass with at least 80% correct.

So we are here to be Guinea pigs for our clients who are all asking, what's on this? How hard is it? The answer so far is we don't know. Jessica and I are here today to take the naturalization in terms of what's gonna be on the test. There are some government websites like P that tell us what basically will be on the test and provide some sample questions, but we've heard from some of our clients that it's not completely accurate.

Speaker 2: That's a little bit hard to understand and navigate because it's a multiple choice exam and there are not multiple choice. Answers to study for. We'll see how accurate those questions are after we take the exam.

Well, we just walked out of the civic exam. We took the highest level difficulty exam, uh, for naturalization. It is a penu ghetto. It's [00:01:00] not super easy. Um, feel pretty confident about it. Do you have 45 minutes to do it? It took me about 10 minutes to get through it. Yeah. And about five minutes to go back and review the questions to see if I had.

Any second thoughts about some of my answers? I would say if you study and you should study, you'll know right off the bat very easily about, I went about like 30 of the questions. Yeah. And then the rest of them, some of them are a little tricky. The answers are not so obvious. I had a couple questions about lease state, like separation of church and state.

That were a little, little unclear to me, and I studied in past the French bar last year, and I found that question to be pretty tricky. So, uh, good luck. It requires a pretty high level of French. It's pretty sophisticated French. They don't try to, to bring it down to us, uh, non-native speaker levels. I think it's an exam to, to take seriously and to study for.

I mean, don't, don't go crazy. What was your experience? 

Speaker: Yeah, kind of the same, I would say like 75% of the questions I knew I didn't have to think about. You know, I could almost answer it without [00:02:00] having to read the question because if you studied the questions they gave you, if you're someone like me who had to go through the PHE training, that lovely four days, um.

You, you might know a lot of it already, so they were tricky questions. I could see people ready for naturalization who don't even have the language to understand the complexity of the question. Nevermind, answer it. We are supposed to hear the results back via email in the next couple of days. Our one of our clients got it within 48 hours.

Both times they took it 

Speaker 3: times, 

Speaker: both times. First one's a, a trial run. The second she nailed it. 

Speaker 2: The exam results are good for life. Unlike the language exam, which does have a two year validity, you can absolutely take it again. You just have to wait 24 hours before you take it again. 

Speaker 3: 24 hours. 

Speaker: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: As if like life is shifted 24 hours 

Speaker 2: as if your naturalization application is going to process it.

Speaker: I have heard that they repeat questions, um, a decent amount of them. So if you wanna take it on a Monday, and then again if necessary, the following Monday. Maybe a decent shot. You're gonna get [00:03:00] some repeated questions, but yeah, like Jessica said, we sat next to each other and we haven't found a question we had in common yet.

Jessica and I took the tests, but we'd like to put Daniel in the hot seat for a minute. Yes. Ask him some of those questions. See how 

Speaker 2: French 

Speaker: he really is. 

Speaker 2: Daniel Daniel, who did not have to take the test to become a French citizen, but did get grilled at the pre picture. 

Speaker 3: And one of the major differences is that they used to ask these questions in the course of that naturalization interview.

Now, the naturalization interview is more just asking about how often do you go back to your home country? Do you speak English or French in your work settings? Your circle. Are they French? Okay, fire away. 

Speaker 2: Who was president when the death penalty was abolished in France? 

Speaker 3: Uh, wouldn't that be 1981? 

Speaker 2: Correct.

Least I hope it's correct. 81. 

Speaker 3: It should be 81, 88 would be way too late. Cut that 

Speaker 2: what it 

Speaker: is. 

Speaker 2: What do we celebrate on May 1st? 

Speaker 3: A Labor Day? 

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. In French 

Speaker 3: fat music. 

Speaker 2: That was one of the, that was one of the options. 

Speaker 3: That was one of the options for, 

Speaker: [00:04:00] you want to vote in the presidential election, but you haven't registered with the electoral list.

Are you able to vote? 

Speaker 3: So a French person's probably always able to vote somewhere. So I would think that if I wasn't registered on the least electoral of the town that I live in, that I would still be qualified to vote in the prior town I was in, and that you could ask a friend who lives there to vote power.

Speaker 2: That sounds nice, but that wasn't one of the options.

Speaker: The two options I narrowed it down to, and this is one of the ones I found tricky was. No, just to flat out, no. Okay. And then there was an option that was tempting, which was that you could vote if you presented your identity card. So we'll need to fact check that one. 

Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't, 'cause I've done the where you like take the votes outta the thing and whatnot.

After I became French, I volunteered for a day and yeah, there's very strict, least who is registered to vote in a given municipality. When you go into vote, you like, my town had six different ones. You had to go to the right one. You can't just show up and just start [00:05:00] voting willy-nilly. Okay. 

Speaker: We are hoping the answer is no, he cannot vote.

That's what we're all pulling for. Right. I 

Speaker 2: had, I had quite a few sex discrimination questions. 

Speaker: Okay. 

Speaker 2: I don't know if you did as well. One of them was, if someone is looking to hire two candidates of same age, same experience, the same background, and they find out later that the man was being paid more than the woman, is this legal.

Speaker 3: I am assuming that the answer is no, it's not illegal. If the only serious difference between two candidates is their gender or their sex and that there's a significant pay gap that would violate the 

Speaker 2: mm-hmm. Some other 

Speaker: questions. 

Speaker 2: Yeah. What, uh, what right is that issue you behind the. Arbitrary detention and arrest of folks in the street.

Speaker 3: Certain liberte. Like Libert? Libert? Yeah. 

Speaker 2: Yeah. That wasn't one of them. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. Okay. Fine. Um, people that are being arrested in the street. 

Speaker 2: Yeah. [00:06:00] From arbitrary arrest in the street. 

Speaker 3: I could pull out. We all went to American Law School. I could, you know, I, the Fourth Amendment. 

Speaker 2: I know, I'm thinking fourth, fourth Amendment was an option.

A reason 

Speaker 3: search. 

Speaker 2: That's, that's where my mind, yeah. Unreasonable search and seizure. That my mind went there too. It was not one of the options. It was Al, which was a contender. Okay. Or, uh, was 

Speaker 3: another, that subject to that person that you're like, you're secure in your, in your personhood, that you're not gonna get arrested like 

Speaker 2: that.

And the other ones were not relevant at all. So. 

Speaker 3: Yeah, I would, that one out would say it's like longstanding principles of like ti that you can't just be randomly arresting people. 

Speaker 2: I think Vve, no. 

Speaker 3: Well, I, I, I've never really seen Vive be like a, a, a legal concept beyond that. There's a visa category called V.

Um, other than that, I don't, uh 

Speaker 2: Right. I think the, the right to just unnecessary intervention in your day to day private life. Right. I don't know. Yeah. I objected 

Speaker: from Intrus. 

Speaker 2: This is the way I justified it to my, 

Speaker: I had one that was kind of funny 'cause they tried to trick me with an. Can answer. 

Speaker 3: We ask 

Speaker: what is the tallest mountain in France?

Speaker 2: Oh, that's Mont Blanc. Yeah, but that's debated. 

Speaker: It's Lamont Blanc [00:07:00] 

Speaker 2: according to who? The 

Speaker: Italians. According to the four options I had on this multiple choice test, it's Lamont Blanc. 

Speaker 2: Yeah. There is 

Speaker: only one answer in France, but they also gave Mount Everest and they gave Mount Rushmore, which I thought just was a little bit sneaky.

Speaker 3: Sneaky In what sense? Who thinks that Rushmore and Everest are in France? 

Speaker: I, I think there's a, a, you know, a, a bias to click something that's familiar, so I doesn't even sound French. Guess you 

don't 

Speaker 3: quite know anything. 

Speaker: Yeah, but 

Speaker 3: what I don't, what I don't like about that one is it kind of feels like a kiss.

Jon Pi for, let's say a, a refugee, like one of my housemates never studied France French in a classroom study. He only studied French from context. And so if he doesn't necessarily know about mom blanc, but he's heard of Rushmore. Yeah. Which kind of person's getting filtered out by this 

Speaker: affirmation bias 

Speaker 3: when, when they're asking questions, just from the disclaimer side of things, the questions already published was not published in the multiple choice, and they're not giving me the multiple choice answers.

So it's okay for us to be vocalizing the questions to y'all at the public 

Speaker 2: and they really, I did see a lot of the questions that I studied. Yeah. So it was easy for me to select the correct answer. Who runs the government [00:08:00] 

Speaker 3: Macron? Um, 

Speaker 2: who or the premier is the premier East? 

Speaker 3: Who, alright. So, yeah. So, uh, Macron runs the country and the premier East, who runs the government.

Speaker 2: Who appoints the, who appoints the Prime Minister. 

Speaker 3: So, um, uh, the president is the person that names the Prime Minister. Uh, they have to basically go off of who is in currently in power in the legislative body, that when there's very clearly a person that is one that's not of the President's party, then that person is, um, Ko.

Like when we had with, um, in the eighties with Te Tech Tuck mi and then his premier minister was uh, Jacque Shiha and that was Koha. But in the 2024 election, uh, there was no clear Victor, so the president kept on just picking whoever he wanted as Prime Minister 

Speaker 2: Daniel. Yeah. Can you throw your trash in the street?

Speaker 3: No. It's probably an Aman for San, 

Speaker 2: but even if the P be, is more than a hundred meters away. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. Don't litter. [00:09:00] That's probably the right answer. 

Speaker: Who acts as interim president if the president dies or is incapacitated? Hmm. 

Speaker 3: After the vice President. It's the President Pro. Temporary? No, that's again, the United States Constitution.

Who acts if the president is incapacitated 

Speaker 2: the P now? 

Speaker 3: Is that the answer? 

Speaker 2: I think so, 

Speaker: yeah. 

Speaker 3: I did not know that. 

Speaker: Who, how is the mayor elected of a, of a city? 

Speaker 2: Ooh, that's kind of a tricky question 

Speaker 3: for my town. It's whoever gets the most seats on the conse municipal, the nce then votes for the mayor. 

Speaker 2: Yeah. You know this because you're, you're voting.

Speaker: Yeah. There's a reason for that. It's because the Coe municipal is the, is the body that elects the mayor. So it's not actually a direct vote from the people. 

Speaker 2: Yes. 

Speaker 3: Ladies, did I pass? I think 

Speaker 2: think I, I think you would've passed. I think you already passed. So that's kind of a mo. Question, 

Speaker 3: get our work. We lead these naturalization question simulations.

So we should in theory know them, right? 

Speaker 2: We should in theory, yes. But you still need to study. We need to study, yeah. Yeah, definitely study. I could have studied more maybe.