REZE number and naturalization decree FAQ

Your ministerial number is on the filing receipt given to you by the prefecture and on letters from the Ministry of the Interior. It starts with the year of your file, followed by a letter and a six-digit number: 2026X 012345, for example. That number identifies your file in the decrees published in the Journal Officiel.

The ministerial number looks like 2026X 012345: the year of the file, a letter, then six digits. Enter it in AlertJO's free search: if a decree already published contains it, you see it immediately. Otherwise you can activate the alert to be told on the day of publication.

In the decrees published in the Journal Officiel every person is attached to a category. Our data shows these codes: NAT, EFF, REI and LIB. The letter inside the ministerial number (the “X” of 2026X 012345) identifies the file: we found no official source documenting what it means, so we prefer not to interpret it. AlertJO monitors every category.

The prefecture number is assigned locally when the file is filed. The ministerial number, commonly called the “REZE number”, is assigned during central processing by the French nationality sub-directorate, based in Rezé (Loire-Atlantique). It is the ministerial number that appears in the decrees of the Journal Officiel, and the one AlertJO uses.

Sources : Ministère de l'Intérieur — Organigramme de la DGEF (janvier 2023)

Three ways. Since 1 February 2023 the publication date of your decree appears in your personal ANEF account. You can also find the issue on Légifrance, or check your ministerial number for free on AlertJO. If your decree has not been published yet, the AlertJO alert (one-off payment) analyses every new issue of the Journal Officiel and emails you on the day your number appears in one.

Sources : Service-Public — Retrouver son décret de naturalisation (F33626)

The Journal Officiel has no official publication time: it goes online on Légifrance early in the morning, Tuesday to Sunday. Naturalization decrees can appear on any publication day, with no announced schedule. AlertJO analyses each issue as soon as it is online and sends the alert on the day of publication, usually within hours.

The Journal Officiel is available on legifrance.gouv.fr. Naturalization decrees appear there among individual acts, as PDFs. For decrees published since 2016 the extract containing nominative information has restricted access: Légifrance asks you to solve a short sum before opening the document.

Sources : Service-Public — Retrouver son décret de naturalisation (F33626)

The nominative extract published in the Journal Officiel lists each person with their last name, first name, date and place of birth, category (NAT, EFF, REI and LIB) and ministerial number. That extract has restricted access on Légifrance. Mind the date: a naturalization decree takes effect on the date it is signed, not on the date it is published in the Journal Officiel.

Sources : Service-Public — Retrouver son décret de naturalisation (F33626) · Service-Public — Naturalisation française par décret (F2213)

Légifrance publishes the decrees but sends no alert: you have to come back after every issue. AlertJO analyses each new issue of the Journal Officiel as soon as it is online and notifies you on the day of publication, usually within hours. You have nothing to check, but we do not guarantee a result: we depend on the issue going online and on the published document being readable.

No official source publishes a delay between the interview and publication, and we cannot measure it: our data does not contain the date of your interview. What we can measure is the age of the files published, from the year written in the ministerial number. Over the last 12 months, 26,908 published people carried a number whose year is readable: the median gap between the number's year and the publication year is 2 year(s), and the most frequent file year is 2023 (29.7% of people). It is an observed order of magnitude, not a forecast for your file.

First check your ANEF account: since 1 February 2023 the publication date of your decree is shown there. With no information, you can write to the French nationality sub-directorate at the address given by service-public.gouv.fr (sdanf-brupi-communications@interieur.gouv.fr), or contact the prefecture that received your file. AlertJO keeps monitoring the Journal Officiel with no time limit until publication.

Sources : Service-Public — Retrouver son décret de naturalisation (F33626)

Yes, every category the decrees use. Our data records NAT, EFF, REI and LIB. AlertJO analyses each issue of the Journal Officiel containing a naturalization decree, whichever department processed the file.

Searching manually means going back to Légifrance after every issue, then opening the nominative extract, which has restricted access. AlertJO does that check for you and emails you on the day of publication, usually within hours. We do not promise a guaranteed result: detection relies on automatically reading the published document.

Sources : Service-Public — Retrouver son décret de naturalisation (F33626)

The extract of the Journal Officiel that contains nominative information has restricted access on Légifrance, and names are not indexed in its search engine, so searching by name is unreliable. AlertJO uses the ministerial number, which identifies a file uniquely. That is the most reliable method, though not infallible.

Sources : Service-Public — Retrouver son décret de naturalisation (F33626)