this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2024
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Legitimate question: aren't there barriers / hurdles to permanent residency still?
A good example of how this is not the case is the UK and Dentists. When Brexit hit and they left the EU (picture if the right in the US had their immigration way), a ton of immigrant Dentists had to leave. It was easy to stay before because of the EU. Now there is a huge shortage of dentists. Surprise surprise.
The barriers are your skills and language. Other than that, no.
Edit: some people move without permanent residency anyway. It has its' drawbacks.
If you have a child it is more complicated than that. You need starting money to be able to move.
If you had a job that could sustain you and you get a new job within EU that can also sustain you, it's about as expensive as you would expect a long distance move to be. There's no system in place as far as I know to block you from getting permanent residency in another EU country because you don't have starting money. That's just your inherent responsability to figure out like with any move.
EU countries are allowed to, by Treaty, expel EU citizens who moved there without the means to live there or a job.
However it's incredibly rare and there really isn't any general procedure to do it: each country does it (or not) it's own way. This tends to be used for people caught sleeping or begging on the streets.
Further, for countries in the Schengen Area, they don't even know you're there unless you register, since you haven't passed any border controls and thus aren't in any database as having arrived but not departed.
We are in complete agreement. Like I said if you get a job in another EU country there's nothing stopping you from getting permanent residency there as well. The discussion was about moving with kids, which is the parents responsibility to figure out when it comes to cost and feasibility, but the EU will not stop them and does not impose additional barriers just because one has kids.
Got it, that's all I meant. I thought there were requirements, it's not just "pack our bags, we're moving to Germany tomorrow"
If you can afford it, yes you can do this. You are allowed to live and work anywhere in the EU.
But if you also need a job to feed you, its more difficult if you do not speak the local language and have not learned something useful.
But from the residency law you absolutely can pack your bag and move to Germany tomorrow as an EU citizen.
I've literally done that inside the EU, though to the UK (back before Brexit) rather than Germany - I flew to London and stayed about a month in a hotel whilst looking for a contract there (I'm a freelancer) and more permanent accommodation.
Years later I did the same to Germany, though I only stayed 3 months.
The only requirement is that you either have a job or have the money to pay for the costs of living there (so you can still go without a job, as long as you have the money to pay for a place to stay, food and so on). The reason for the requirement that you can pay your way (either from a job or savings) is because people can't just move to another EU country to do things like living on the street and begging or living of the local Social Security.
Some countries also have a requirement that you register after 3 months there (for example, Germany), though it's not any kind of applying to stay, it's simply registering as living there. This is usually because there are associated obligations for residents in that country, not just in terms were do you pay tax, but in some countries (for example, Germany and The Netherlands) there are things like mandatory health insurance.
In practice as an EU citizen, if you have the savings or the kind of job which you can do in 3 month stints or remotely, you absolutely can hop from country to country every 3 months without having to register with anybody (though I'm not sure how taxes would work - I suppose you would pay them in the last country you registered as a Resident).
If you know the language, if it weren't for taxes being per country and the rights and duties of Residents being different in different countries (such as the Mandatory Health Insurance for Residents in some countries but not others) hence the requirement to register after 3 months in some countries, the whole thing would be as easy as moving within your own country.
Interesting. So if you have decent work (or remote work), why not just leave the shittier countries and go to the best?
Well, the language is generally different, which is a big barrier to moving (though you can get away with just English in a most countries, but some stuff - often public services - is only in the local language). There is also a cultural element in that people behave and expect slightly different things in different countries, which can be a bit of an adjustment.
Even bigger than that is that most people aren't comfortable with big changes and tend to stick to their own country - at the very least the first big move takes a significant amount of courage.
Then if you have your own house with lots of stuff you have to arrange for the move, which will probably cost you maybe €1500 - €3000 depending on the distance and how much stuff you have.
And finally, in my experience no country is all good or all shit - they generally have some good things and some bad things. Also, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence until you move there, were after a while it's the grass on the other side of the fence that starts looking greener.
That said, some people - mainly the so-called Digital Nomads - do spend their life moving from country to country whilst working remotelly, which works especially well if you spend different Seasons in different places in Europe (some places are much better in the Summer and others in Winter). This is not new: I've met people whose life was working as Scuba Diver instructors in Summer in a country and as Ski Instructors in Winter in a different country.
That's almost how I migrated, except I had to give a month's notice at work and I'd already found an address to register at.