As the parent points out there's indeed such a law in France but from personal experience I can tell that it doesn't prevent the bank from closing your account without an explanation (the explanation I was given off-record was my citizenship). The law merely forces the bank to open you an account which can later be closed. So definitely the right direction but IMO not far enough.
To compensate for that there's a "right for an account" law but it doesn't work that well.
I sold an RV for nearly $10k and the buyer paid in cash.
Other than my mortgage payment, I have never paid for something via a bank transfer. Merchants take credit cards and services provided by individuals (e.g. piano teacher) take check or cash.
That seems fishy and can’t be right. The only way this would work is if you don’t have residence but not because you have the wrong citizenship.
The first wave of account closures in 2022 was absurdly wide and even affected some French citizens. It was a scandal that got some coverage in the news [1][2][3]. I suspect the filter was the birthplace which is known to the bank, even though some media speculated it was about names. IMO names would be insane even for a bank, however I can imagine a name being one of the inputs for an opaque ML risk-scoring model.
French citizens that I know of got their accounts reinstantiated, but foreign nationals continue to struggle to this day. There's a collective lawsuit going on but it will take years to achieve anything withhin the french justice system.
[1] https://www.lepoint.fr/societe/comptes-bancaires-bloques-en-...
[2] https://www.nouvelobs.com/entreprises/20220726.OBS61366/des-...
[3] https://www.lesechos.fr/finance-marches/banque-assurances/en...
Since my wife is Russian and we have lots of Russian friends we're not blind to these checks, but in all cases they were resolved by submitting residence documents. Success rate was 100%.
Of folks that were not residents however or that did not manage to prove their residence, very few got their accounts re-instantiated. We also had a case of someone who was not able to keep their account until they stopped receiving a Russian salary.
Based on my network of ex-colleagues who are now scattered all across Europe the best banking experience for foreigners is in Netherlands and the worst is in France, Spain and Poland. Germany is somewhere in the middle, for other countries I don't have datapoints.
The best part about Europe is the common market that includes online banking. Revolut and Bunq seem to accept all legal residents and that's enough for 90% of basic services. Life would be much harder without them.
The only people that ran into issues had monetary transfers in and out of Russia or folks who did not manage to actually immigrate properly. With regards to monetary transfers in and out of Russia, I even have that as an Austrian citizen, that to me is largely an unrelated problem to citizenship.
Many western financial institutions simply won't keep track of who holds Nikopol or Enerhodar and will close account held by Ukrainian people or business.
(and when you think about the possibility of the account holder lying, it gets worse)
Does that apply to US citizens (legally residing in the EU) that routinely get denied bank accounts because the bank don’t want to deal with the IRS ?
May be he probably could bank with LaPoste.
Beyond that, I wonder if you really believe that the EU has no Anti-Money Laudering / Counter Finance Terrorism laws.
Yes, it applies to every legal resident.
> Beyond that, I wonder if you really believe that the EU has no Anti-Money Laudering / Counter Finance Terrorism laws.
Why should I not believe this? I know it does.
Because you don’t believe an EU bank can terminate an account because they’re worried it may trigger an AML/CTF regulation or similar without bothering to really check if it does.
*edit : AML/CTF and similar rules have to be exceptions to basic banking rights.
No, I questioned the particular situation given my personal experience with the Ukrainian war for account holders in Europe, the existing banking regulation around the basic account.
For the record, I have an official denial letter from LaPoste. Which, by the way, is very nice on their part: many banks refuse to put that in wringing and without a letter it's hard to exercise your droit au compte with the Bank of France.
The reason for account closure is the fear of anti-AML laws and sanctions that have nothing to do with loans. Banks in fact love offering small loans and it's not uncommon to have your account closed while having a pre-approved loan at the same time — these are different bank divisions in action.
And in any case, turning personal debit accounts into credit accounts is not something that was asked for. I lived long enough to have used Visa Electron and Maestro cards that made most of overdraft scenarios impossible. It was the banking industry decision to get rid of them.
As far as I understood the article this is the main reason he gives. Loans or other objective reasons that can make the interaction with the client unprofitable are only drawn as (bad) analogies and not as the actual explanation.