France has changed its position on Full Self-Driving. Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot, who refused to authorise the system in July, said on 2 September 2026 — after a videoconference with Elon Musk — that French authorities had been working with Tesla for months on technical adaptations "that will allow France to support its homologation". Tesla has handed the ministry two FSD-equipped cars, and France has authorised testing them on public roads.
The two objections, and what answered them
In July, Tabarot named two specific problems and called Tesla's safety trade-offs "pas encore suffisantes" — not yet sufficient. Both now have an answer in the evidence file Tesla published on 1 September.
| July objection | What the filing puts against it |
|---|---|
| FSD can exceed the posted limit, by up to 50% to keep pace with traffic | 98% of overspeed cases were at or below the surrounding traffic's median speed |
| Driver attention degrades during lane changes and roundabouts | Supervision stays mandatory — hands on the wheel, driver ready to take over |
Two of the eight studies in that filing track the French complaints almost word for word. That is not a coincidence. France's refusal in July set out precisely which numbers Tesla would need to produce, and the filing produced them.
Paris was already in the test set
The submission reports 1.6 million kilometres driven across five European countries since April 2026 with no major collisions, and a 99% success rate across more than 230,000 scenarios in six cities — Paris among them. French roads were part of Tesla's validation work before France agreed to test anything itself.
Why France decides this for the whole EU
Approval runs through the Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles, which votes on 6 October. It needs a double majority: at least 15 of 27 member states, representing 65% of the EU population.
| Share of EU population | |
|---|---|
| The five states that recognised the Dutch approval | about 8.9% |
| France alone | about 15% |
| Needed to carry the vote | 65% |
France is worth more on its own than every country that has already said yes, combined. Germany and Italy are still reviewing, and without at least two of the three largest member states, 65% is arithmetically out of reach. That is why one sentence from a transport minister matters more here than the two test cars do.
What has not happened
Nothing is homologated. Tabarot's message commits to supporting homologation without a timeline and without published conditions, and a two-car road-test programme is not an approval. FSD (Supervised) remains a Level 2 system in which the driver is legally driving — which is also why a speeding ticket earned under FSD stays the driver's.
The objections France raised have not been engineered away, either. They have been answered with Tesla's own measurements, presented by Tesla. Sweden has asked the EU to reject the application unless the speeding behaviour is removed, and the European Transport Safety Council wants the vote postponed altogether. France moving from refusal to support does not settle 6 October. It does make the arithmetic survivable for the first time.