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My impression living in France for the last year is very similar to yours. It's the mecca of paperwork (but doing taxes was relatively easy).

And if you're required to supply some documentation from another country, you're likely to be required to get it translated to French by an official translator (which not only takes time but can be quite expensive). In contrast, I've never had a problem handing in German documents to authorities in Sweden and Swedish documents to authorities in Austria. Documents in English have certainly been accepted everywhere outside of France.

The catch-22s are the best. Renting an apartment requires that you have a French bank account, and getting a French bank account requires that you already have somewhere to live in France...

> Renting an apartment requires that you have a French bank account, and getting a French bank account requires that you already have somewhere to live in France...

Had the same :) But it is not really true. You can get a french bank account without living in France, got mine while living in Germany. But of course not all people working for a bank know or respect that. We got checked by my consellier very carefully before she said oui to opening the account.

Nice is the other one: To get an appartment you normally have to have an insurance, but to get that you need an appartment. Works with the landlord accepting to get the assurance attestation one week later, but is goodwill. Of course, a couple from marokko I know did not get the key from the man responsible in such a situation, while getting the appartment because it was university housing. They stood on the street after arriving here… That was pure racism, but shows that many thing here need goodwill to work despite the system.

> The catch-22s are the best. Renting an apartment requires that you have a French bank account, and getting a French bank account requires that you already have somewhere to live in France...

Not specific to France - I had the same experience as a French in Berlin (though it was twenty years ago - it might have changed).

Changed. Does not matter where you send the money from anymore, and european virements are pretty painless.

And same in the UK. Ultimately, it can be worked around if you find the right people in the right mood, but it's insanely annoying.

Sweden was the worst on that aspect. Most owners require that you have a company signing the lease on your behalf (supposedly to guarantee the rent, yet they generally refuse advance payments on the rent).

Same in UK as well, took one month for me to open a bank account after I moved to London. Had to do a driving license + insurance number, nightmare.

The catch-22 applies to U.S. as well. Renting an apartment requires a credit score, which you get from having a credit card, which you can only get by having a credit score.

Well, that's not entirely true. I went through the process somewhat recently, and you can get a credit card by depositing some money first and using that as your max credit. That way the bank doesn't take any risk but you can build up your credit.

It's called a secured credit card... as in it's secured by your balance with the bank. Using it helps build your credit score and history so you can get a standard credit card. I have a friend doing this now who's just never used credit before.

It's more of an issue today since so many people just use their debit cards whereas years ago people used cash and credit cards. If you wanted the convenience of not carrying cash, you had to use your credit card since ATM cards didn't have Mastercard/Visa logos and couldn't be used to pay for things in stores. That's how today you wind up with someone in their late 20s that's never had a credit card or a loan.

> That's how today you wind up with someone in their late 20s that's never had a credit card or a loan.

This was me till I was 28. I was able to skip having to use a secured credit card by getting a joint card with someone who already has great credit.

Typically it's very easy to get a credit card from an institution with which you have a checking or savings account. I wouldn't be surprised if you had to "opt out" at this point in order to NOT receive one based on how aggressively companies target people new to the credit market. (This is especially true for college students who routinely get cards thrown at them with insane limits)

There are starter cards for people that don't have an established credit history. It's really not complicated - stop trying to make it out to be something it's not

I've been an American 40 years and never had a credit score or a credit report and never borrowed any money (the three agencies don't know who I am). Nevertheless, I can rent apartments. I just have to have a lot of cash available for deposits.

Funny. I had to translate french document to get something from an american bank. Rigidity goes both ways.

Govt bureaucracy, Corporate bureaucracy, they just need to be part of a large enough organization with an insufficient connection to their customer base.

Re the catch-22: I wonder the degree to which you're affected by this depends on how seriously you take it (sort of like Kafka's "The Trial"). Could you maybe just supply any address (your workplace, some other contact) and get round it that way? There's still a handful of people who this won't help - folks rich/skilled enough to move countries without having a job or contacts and those unfortunate enough to have fled another and entered as a refugee.

You have the right answer sadly... It's just impossible to grasp the stupid amount of paperwork you have to fill for everything. As an example I needed more paperwork for my train rail-card than my passport (this is not a joke, it was really the case). In the UK, I just give a 10 pound note and I have my oyster card, no questions asked. My brother has a small business, it's just impossible to understand what the administration wants and they take ages to answer to stupid things we should not even have to fill, I really hope that one day, they will destroy the current bureaucracy and the country could finally have the place it deserves internationally. /rant

They were enlightened enough to separate State from Church but not State from Market.

This is misleading.

Many many countries are worse ...

And the level of bureaucracy is not the same everywhere in France. Education is a very conservative administration. Universities even more so, because they don't have much money (it's very different than in the US), so they stick to the process (with paper) they have.

In the private sector, this is quite different. Also many company-focused administrations (URSAAF, CIPAV) provides web site/app where you can manage your file. It is not perfect, but it's getting better every year. I think my accountant is doing 80% of her job digitally.

> It is still the most bureaucratic country on earth.

Not really! Italian here, living in France for the last ten years: France bureaucracy can occasionally be pedantic, but no French paperwork has made me miss Italy.

To be fair cheques are still popular in France and regularly used by administration, landlords and individuals.

To be fair cheques are also popular in the US. Until recently I had to pay my rent with Cheque. I live in an apartment complex in San Francisco.

My German bank doesn't even offer cheque books anymore.

Cash is King is Germany.

It's rather awkward if you come from a country with heavy card use. It's just weird to carry a few hundred euros in cash in your pocket these days.

You need cash in Germany, but not a lot of it – everything big takes a debit card. That does not help strangers with their credit cards though, so they get the wrong impression.

I pay cash at the bakery, to get a coffee, to load my canteen card at work, and to buy bus tickets in small cities at the driver, that's it. Buying used cars is usually done by cash (even 10k and more). Almost everywhere else you can pay with a German debit card (Girocard).

But credit Cards are coming fast to Germany. Since a few weeks even the cheapest supermarkets, including Aldi, started to accept MasterCard and Visa.

Thanks for correcting, not being there too often currently things like credit cards arriving there I miss. That was unthinkable three years ago.

I was surprised, too. Remember that they introduced cashless payments just ten years ago.

I think it has much to do with the EU capping interbank fees.

I think the real reason is that Germany had working debit cards for a very long time already, there was simply no need for credit cards. Every bank and store was accepting every banks's debit card. Since the big international credit card companies cream of a couple of percent when you pay with a credit card, but German debit cards don't, retail was really reluctant for a long time to accept credit cards.

The problem with credit cards in Germany is that they don't use 2FA. It's the same old signature system. Even online transactions don't require 2FA.

It depends on where you get it. Some banks (most notoriously almost all Sparkasse) only give out chip+signature cards. But chip+PIN cards are common as well, just like "Verified by Visa" and such systems.

> Some banks (most notoriously almost all Sparkasse)

Coincidentally, I have a Sparkasse credit card without chip+pin. Regardless, there shouldn't be a choice for 2FA.

That really depends on the specific bank. I've got a debit card from a Sparkasse with Chip+PIN and 2FA for online transaction for quite a few years.

The discussion was on "credit" not "debit" card. The "debit" card for Sparkasse does have 2FA but the TAN based 2FA is atrocious. You need to carry a separate device, match diodes to your screen code OR insert at least 4 sets of numbers before you get your 2FA code. Yes, I know you could use SMS but it isn't the best idea particularly if you are traveling.

Finally, is the EC Maestro card from Sparkaasse really a debit card? A lot of online merchants would not accept it.

>The problem with credit cards in Germany is that they don't use 2FA. It's the same old signature system. Even online transactions don't require 2FA.

This is not generally true. My credit cards use PIN when the terminal supports it and only fall back to signature when used with older terminals.

I've never heard of online transactions with 1FA auth, most banks use a combination of user login and challenge-response TAN lists or mobile TANs. Special hardware devices that require you to insert your debit card, enter a PIN and have the device read a code directly from the computer monitor using photo diodes are quite common, too.

Yes it is quite strange (and annoying) but you get used to it.

Almost certainly because your landlord is in their 70s and doesn't trust all this newfangled computers stuff.

I have one of those.

Exactly. And virements (bank transfer) are really strange, at least with my bank (wait 24 hours to send money, I never saw that before). For me, that fits well into the image of a country that is not at all modern.

But: That at least changed. They are still popular like you said, but by now you can get by without them (I for example have none), many stores do not accept them anymore. That is new.

What to say about the US (and Canada) where cheap transfers between bank accounts don't exist (at least from individual to individual)

Yes, where it exists it's rarely instantaneous across banks

Well, it sounds really impolite saying that. But you can probably guess what I think of it: I think it is really strange that a nation as modern as the USA is in that regard 100 years behind basically all other industrial nations.

Though instantaneous they are also not in Germany, can take some time to arrive.

There was a good Planet Money episode on this phenomenon[1].

The short version is that, apparently unlike most European countries, there are thousands and thousands of banks in the U.S., each operating under both Federal and one of 50 different state regulatory regimes.

It's also the case that the U.S. was one of the first countries to move to electronic interbank check clearing and funds transfer, and the resulting clearinghouse is a big hairy legacy system that they're not particularly inclined or motivated to mess with.

[1] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/10/04/229224964/episo...

Sure they do, in Canada anyway. Interac email transfer is quick and painless, although it costs a dollar or so.

Not really, because the reference is their email (and the receiver has to 'receive' it), no?

I'm talking about giving someone your bank/branch/acc number and send them a payment.

Spain is exactly the same. Pointless paperwork again and again, asking for things they already know, asking for multiple copies of documents, etc. In fact, when I finished my PhD, in order to graduate they asked me for a birth certificate. A birth certificate!

I guess they don't want replicants to graduate.

They ask for a birth certificate here as well, already when starting. If you are foreigner, each year again. I guess they think the place of birth could've changed…

(French expat here, so impressions are from a few years ago and reading the press)

The tax people are generally competent, and there was a huge effort to streamline the process a few years ago. The rest of the French bureaucracy often lives somewhere in the middle ages ("of course you need to waste several hours by physically coming to our offices"). And the bastards are totally unable to communicate with each other. And that's the ones with funding. The parts which are criminally understaffed like Pôle Emploi (nominally tasked with finding work for the unemployed and distributing benefits), you really don't want to have to do anything with.

There is a big incentive for any state to have a well run tax administration. It is the profit center for the state.

> On the other hand, doing the taxes was not at all complicated and I got proper help

Tax collection is relentless and very efficient - they act is if it was THEIR money. France can borrow at very little interest rate because it is known that it will repay its debts, it can collect the money for it.