Pour les cyclistes franchissant les frontières — L’Officiel, 16 January 1938

“Pour les cyclistes franchissant les frontières”, L’Officiel de l’Automobile, du Cycle et de la Motocyclette, 16 January 1938, page 23: the customs administration’s letter of 26 October 1937 on discharging the passage cards of bicycles taken abroad. The heading and the numbers of the conditions are transcribed as printed; the text is summarized in Ebykr’s words, and the page image carries it in full.

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Pour les cyclistes franchissant les frontières.

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[Ebykr summary; the article’s text is not reproduced. A short editorial introduction tells the Vélocistes of the border départements, who are often asked for advice by customers crossing the frontier on business or for pleasure, that they will find useful a letter sent on 26 octobre 1937 by the Directeur général des Douanes to an unnamed correspondent, M. X… The letter, printed in full in quotation marks, answers a request of 27 September from that correspondent on behalf of the accredited clubs: that customs passage cards (cartes de passages) for vélocipèdes not discharged on leaving France might be regularized before they expire, on a declaration by foreign authorities that the machine was outside France. The clubs had complained that the rules weigh heavily on them, since for cards valid one year they may wait ten or eleven months before they can ask to regularize an undischarged card, and meanwhile machines change hands or are stolen, leaving the clubs unable to meet their undertakings to the customs administration. The Director replies that the rules exist to stop practices harmful to the Trésor: if an unexpired card could be regularized early on a certificate that the machine was abroad, its holder could then bring the bicycle back into France on the regularized card without its being taken back into charge, so that it escaped customs control and stayed in France without paying duty. Acknowledging the complaint, he nonetheless authorizes early regularization of vélocipède passage cards on two conditions: first, the cards must be deposited at the customs office where they were taken out; second, the machine’s presence abroad must be certified, at a date later than that deposit, by a foreign authority (customs, municipality, police and the like), which must also state that the vélocipède no longer carried the French customs seal (plomb de douane) or that it removed the seal itself. Cards reported lost (adirées) can be regularized only on a certificate showing the machine abroad after the cards’ expiry. The customs service, he ends, is being instructed accordingly.]

[The item has no drawings or photographs; a heavy rule closes it at the foot of the column.]

[Below the rule the column carries the boxed “Ce Cachet Syndical” notice with the round stamp of the Syndicat Général des Motoristes, Motocistes, Vélocistes, not part of this record.]