Anne-Gaëlle Baudoin, director of the National Agency for Secure Documents (ANTS), which oversees the issuance of identity documents, indicates on franceinfo Friday April 29 that 400 local systems and 30% additional staff are in progress. deployment to reduce delays in obtaining an appointment. It is currently necessary to count “on average two months” for an application for the renewal of a passport or identity card, against “15 days to 3 weeks usually”she says.
franceinfo: Some get up at dawn to get appointments at the town hall: how to explain this situation?
Anne-Gaelle Baudoin: It is a very strong concern for the Ministry of the Interior to ensure that this local public service is provided and strengthened. We are facing an exceptional situation after confinement, where many titles [de passeports et cartes d’identité] were ultimately not requested. These are more than 1.3 million titles which, during this period, were not requested compared to the usual movements, so there is this catch-up effect. Our fellow citizens want to go on vacation, to travel. There is a very strong increase in demand that has been observed. Added to this is probably also the attractiveness effect of the new identity card rolled out last year.
What are the deadlines for redoing your usual papers and what about today?
There are two things. Usually, the deadline for making an appointment is usually around 15 days to three weeks, with a deadline then to instruct and produce this title which is also around 15 days to three weeks. Today, the difficulty is focused on making an appointment, it takes on average two months to get one, with very different situations from one territory to another. We are mobilized through additional resources and staff. We have more than 30% of staff from the Ministry of the Interior in the prefectures who have already been deployed in the field compared to the usual means. We also work closely with the Association of Mayors of France and town halls so that additional meetings can be offered on the ground. Very concretely, today, more than 400 collection devices, that is to say the equipment which makes it possible to record the request for an identity card or passport, will be offered to the mayors on the ground in each department. by the prefects. They were asked to go and meet the mayors in the coming days.
Is this an unprecedented effort?
This is a truly unprecedented effort, commensurate with this very strong and rapid increase in demand for identity cards and passports. Our aim is that by the summer the situation will be as close as possible to a normal situation in terms of appointments and that no one will be prevented from going on vacation or forced in one way or another other.
Is it the deadline for an appointment that gets stuck more or the time needed to produce identity documents?
The priority is the deadlines for meetings at the town hall, since in terms of both instruction and in terms of production [des pièces d’identités], we are now in a normal situation. On the other hand, indeed, the delays are very lengthened to find an appointment. Prefer the online pre-request on the ANTS website to prepare your file, this allows you to halve the appointment time. It is as many appointments possible in addition for the municipalities, to anticipate these requests. You shouldn’t ask for a title when you don’t strictly need it. It is also important to remember that it is soon the time of the patent and the baccalaureate for which an identity document is requested: identity documents that have expired or expired for less than five years are completely acceptable. We are going to remind it through the prefects, at the local level, to families, to parents, so that they do not have any stress related to that.