The first time I heard the word "francisation" shouted across a pontoon in Camaret, I assumed it was an insult. It is not. It is the annual tax that French-flagged boats pay for the privilege of flying the tricolour, and every season a few visiting cruisers panic that they owe it too. They almost never do. But the rules are worth knowing, because the moment you buy a boat in France or put one on the French register, this tax lands in your lap.
So here is the plain version, with the 2025 numbers, and the one situation where a foreigner genuinely has to pay.
What the DAFN Actually Is
DAFN stands for Droit Annuel de Francisation et de Navigation, the annual francisation and navigation duty. Since 2022 it has been renamed the Taxe Annuelle sur les Engins Maritimes a Usage Personnel, or TAEMUP, and the legal basis sits in the Code des impositions sur les biens et services. Almost nobody on the water calls it TAEMUP. The old name stuck, so I will use both.
The key point is who pays. The DAFN is tied to the French flag and to French registration, not to where you cruise. If your boat is registered in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, or anywhere outside France, you do not pay the DAFN. You may have a temporary admission position to manage instead, which is a customs matter rather than a flag tax, and I have written about that in the piece on the VAT status of a boat in EU waters. The two get confused constantly. The DAFN is a flag tax. VAT is a goods tax. They are not the same thing and you can owe one without the other.
How It Is Calculated
The bill is the sum of two parts: a hull component based on length, and an engine component based on administrative horsepower (chevaux fiscaux, abbreviated CV). Add them together and that is your annual figure.
Boats under 7 metres are exempt from the hull part entirely, and a boat under 7 metres with less than 22 administrative CV pays nothing at all. That covers a huge slice of the small-craft fleet. Above that, the 2025 hull bands run like this:
- 7m to under 8m: 77 euros
- 8m to under 9m: 105 euros
- 9m to under 10m: 178 euros
- 10m to under 11m: 240 euros
- 11m to under 12m: 274 euros
- 12m to under 15m: 458 euros
- 15m to under 30m: 886 euros
The engine part starts biting at 6 CV. The first 5 CV are free (unless the engine is 100 CV or more, in which case there is no free allowance), and above that you pay per CV in rising bands: 14 euros per CV from 6 to 8 CV, 16 euros from 9 to 10 CV, 35 euros from 11 to 20 CV, 40 euros from 21 to 25 CV, 44 euros from 26 to 50 CV, 50 euros from 51 to 99 CV, and 64 euros per CV from 100 CV upward with no allowance.
A worked example helps. Take a French-registered 11.5 metre sailing yacht with a 30 CV diesel. The hull band is 274 euros. The engine: 25 CV above the free 5, charged across the bands, which works out to a few hundred euros depending on exactly how the steps stack. The total annual bill for a boat like that sits comfortably in the 400 to 700 euro range. A 9 metre weekender with a 20 CV outboard pays far less. A 24 metre motor yacht with twin 400 CV engines pays many thousands.
There is an age reduction worth knowing: older hulls get a taper, so a boat over a certain age pays a reduced rate, and very old craft can fall out of the hull charge altogether. The taper is applied automatically once your boat's build year is on file. A point that catches people: administrative CV is not the same as the kilowatt or brake-horsepower figure on the engine plate. The French fiscal rating is calculated from displacement and a formula, so do not assume a 40 kW diesel sits in the band you would guess from the brochure. The figure that matters is the one recorded on the registration document, and if it looks wrong it is worth challenging before the bill is set, because an over-stated CV rating can push you up a band and cost real money every single year for the life of the boat.
When a Foreigner Actually Pays
Three situations turn a visitor into a DAFN payer.
The first is buying a boat that is already French-flagged and keeping her on the French register. The moment you become the registered owner, the tax follows the boat, and you inherit the annual bill. If you are weighing this up, the practical mechanics of registration sit in my notes on French boat registration for foreign owners, which is where you formally become liable.
The second is importing your own boat and choosing to re-flag her French. People do this for long-term residence, for canal cruising convenience, or because they have moved to France permanently. That is a deliberate choice, and it comes bundled with VAT and registration questions covered in importing a boat into France. Re-flagging is rarely worth it for a short stay.
The third, less obvious, is residence. If you become resident in France and your boat is based here long term, the flag question and the temporary admission clock both change, and that is when people drift into French registration almost by accident.
If none of those apply, and you are a UK, Dutch, German, or non-EU owner cruising on your home flag, you owe no DAFN. Full stop. A capitainerie has no business charging it, and if a marina invoice ever lists "francisation" against a foreign-flagged boat, query it.
Paying It, If You Must
For boats liable in 2025, payment was due before 1 April for whoever owned the vessel on 1 January. It is declared and paid online through the douane portal, and the French customs service (Douane) administers it, not the maritime affairs office. Miss the deadline and penalties accrue, so if you have just bought a French boat, sort the account early in the year rather than waiting for a reminder that may go to the previous owner's address.
One caution on the future. A reform of the TAEMUP has been under discussion, with the nautical industry federation (the FIN) pushing for a rewrite before 2027 because the current bands produce some odd jumps. The numbers above are the 2025 scale. If you are reading this in a later season, check the current bands on the official douane site before you budget, because this is exactly the kind of tax that gets quietly re-tabled in a finance bill.
The Bigger Money Picture
The DAFN is one line in the cost of keeping a boat in France, and on its own it is rarely the line that hurts. Berthing, lift-out, and insurance dwarf it for most owners. If you are building a budget for basing a boat here rather than just visiting, the annual running costs of a boat in France give the full shape of it, and the DAFN slots in as a modest fixed cost once you know your hull length and engine rating.
One last comparison helps put the numbers in proportion. The DAFN on a 11.5 metre French-flagged yacht might run 400 to 700 euros a year. The berth for that same boat on the Cote d'Azur can run that much in a fortnight in August. Insurance is several hundred to a couple of thousand. Antifouling and a lift-out is another four-figure line most years. Against all that, the francisation tax is a rounding error, and it is the one cost on the list that scales cleanly with two facts you already know: your hull length and your engine's fiscal rating. There are no surprises in it once you have the bands in front of you.
That is also why I would not let the DAFN drive a flag decision on its own. People occasionally ask whether they should keep a boat on a foreign register purely to dodge the francisation tax. The tax is too small to justify that on its own. The flag choice should turn on where you live, how you cruise, and your VAT and registration position, with the DAFN as a minor line item rather than the deciding factor. If the rest of the picture points to a French flag, a few hundred euros a year should not stop you.
For the visiting cruiser the headline is simple: fly your own flag, keep your VAT paperwork in order, and the francisation tax is somebody else's problem. The pontoon at Camaret can shout all it likes.
