Long-term residence permit for third country nationals in EU

[baris]

Hei guys!

There is an EU directive about a long-term residence permit for third country nationals in EU. You can find it here: http://europa.eu.int/scadplus/leg/en/lvb/l23034.htm .

Basic idea is that, after staying in an EU country for 5 years, you can have almost the same benefits as an EU citizen and this long-term residence permit is indeed long (i.e. 10 years). It should have been implemented by 23 January 2006 but I guess very few EU states implemented this. Do you have any idea about the situation in Finland? I also wonder if these Council directives are compulsory to implement for EU states or not.

[daryl]

Hei guys!

There is an EU directive about a long-term residence permit for third country nationals in EU. You can find it here: http://europa.eu.int/scadplus/leg/en/lvb/l23034.htm .

Basic idea is that, after staying in an EU country for 5 years, you can have almost the same benefits as an EU citizen and this long-term residence permit is indeed long (i.e. 10 years). It should have been implemented by 23 January 2006 but I guess very few EU states implemented this. Do you have any idea about the situation in Finland? I also wonder if these Council directives are compulsory to implement for EU states or not.

This Directive is fallout from the ongoing campaign to establish a form of EU citizenship for third country nationals who are permanently resident in a Member State.

The present situation in Finland is that on 17 June 2005 the Ministry of the Interior set up a working group to prepare the necessary amendments to the Aliens Act (project no. SM048:00/2005). This working group has not yet reported, and as baris points out, the Directive should have been implemented in January.

The bare outline of the current legislative reform project is in the government project register here:

http://www.hare.vn.fi/mHankePerusSelaus.asp?h_iId=10736

The fact that the necessary amendments have not yet been implemented in Finland is no cause for alarm. Given the nature of the Directive, its effects will not be felt for some years anyway, and in the unlikely event that Finnish law does not deliver the rights conferred by the Directive in some individual case, then the victim can claim those rights by referring to the Directive itself.

Obviously the Finnish permanent residence permit already goes a long way towards implementing this Directive, although I can construct a case in which the right to long-term residence might be secured before the foreigner is eligible for a permanent residence permit.

To find out more about the project at the Interior Ministry, forum members could harrass the secretary to the working group with requests for a progress report. If this is refused, then send a request for the signed minutes of the working group meetings, which became public when they were signed. Report the slightest resistance to this second request to the Office of the Attorney General without a second thought. It's called open government.

daryl

[simakun]

forgive me if i appear a little slow on this but i just want to get this straight: if a non-eu person has a permanent residence permit for finland, they are then entitled to live in any of the EU countries as of right now regardless of whether the necessary local (2nd member state) legislation has been passed? And it doesn't matter how long the non-eu person has held that permanent permit?

one of the conditions laid out is that the person has to have resided in the member state for 5 continuous years but permanent permits in finland used to be issued just after 2 years. does the 5 year threshold still matter for purposes of living in another member state if the non-eu person already has a permanent residence permit?

[daryl]

forgive me if i appear a little slow on this but i just want to get this straight: if a non-eu person has a permanent residence permit for finland, they are then entitled to live in any of the EU countries as of right now regardless of whether the necessary local (2nd member state) legislation has been passed? And it doesn't matter how long the non-eu person has held that permanent permit?

one of the conditions laid out is that the person has to have resided in the member state for 5 continuous years but permanent permits in finland used to be issued just after 2 years. does the 5 year threshold still matter for purposes of living in another member state if the non-eu person already has a permanent residence permit?

Referrring to the gloss that baris mentioned (and not to the text of the Directive itself), I think the following extract may be helpful:

The provisions of the Directive do not prevent Member States from issuing permanent residence permits on terms that are more favourable than those set out in the Directive. Nevertheless, such residence permits do not confer the right of residence in the other Member States.

Right of residence in the other Member States

A long-term resident may exercise the right of residence, for a period exceeding three months, in a Member State other than the one which granted him the status, subject to compliance with certain conditions laid down in this proposal, including:

exercise of an economic activity in an employed or self-employed capacity; or
pursuit of studies or vocational training; or
other purposes.

This indicates quite clearly that a permanent residence permit issued by a Member State will not, in and of itself, confer the right to live in other Member States. This right will arise after five years of residence in a Member State.

It is not yet clear to me whether this means that the holder of a permanent residence permit in Finland will need to obtain a separate long-term EU resident's residence permit in order to exercise rights under the Directive. It is also not clear whether this will affect the permanent residence permit already held, or how this will affect application of the "two years of absence" rule that governs the loss of a permanent residence permit by default. It is also not clear how this entire arrangement will sit with citizenship applications and qualifying periods under the Finnish Nationality Act.

It should also be noted that the right to live in other Member States is subject to the same, slightly vague, formulation as applies to EU citizens. In practice the most important thing will be the conditions under which a third country national can be expelled and sent back to the first Member State. For example if someone who has integrated into a Swedish-speaking part of Finland then relocates from Finland to Sweden for the purpose of employment but then becomes unemployed, does this entitle Sweden to send the person back to Finland? Bear in mind that the labour market is supposed to be integrated and that a Swedish speaker has much better employment prospects in Sweden than in Finland.

BTW if we open up a detailed discussion of this Directive here, then we also ought to request a hearing so that the issues raised (such as those above) can be properly submitted to the working group. The important thing is to submit the request. It is a safe bet that the Ministry of the Interior will fail (in some "terribly sorry, but..." fashion) to arrange the actual hearing, but this provides a useful lever to embarrass their presenting officials when the proposal reaches the committee stages in Parliament. Such tricks should not be missed.

daryl