Importing Plants and Plant  Based Products to France

Plants and Plant based products

Bio-security is a very very big deal. Most countries with an agriculture industry have had very strict rules for decades. This includes the UK and Europe. Now that the UK is outside of the European Union travellers of any nationality arriving in the EU from the UK are now subject to EU/National rules that have been in place for a long time. 

In summary, virtually all plants are banned and that includes those used for cooking. The only exceptions are

• bananas, coconuts, dates, pineapples, and durians, as these fruit do not pose a risk

• whereby you obtain a phytosanitary certificate specific to an individual importation event

Sources

• See pages 16 to 19 of the official guidance [December 2016] is here. 

• The relevant screenshots are in this 180daysinFrance Facebook post in January 2021 post here

• A brief audiovisual from 2019 is here

Phytosanitary certificate

The 180days team have received detailed information about how to obtain a Phytosanitary certificate. In summary, 

• it is a very complex process that requires dealing with more than one UK government department.   

• all soil must be removed from your plants

• costs will be in the order of £90 or more for each shipment. 

As the effort and cost involved will be too much for the average second home owner we do not intend to provide any more information at this stage.