On Wednesday 26 July, Member State experts will once again be debating the revision of the European directive on long-term residents (LTRs) in the EU in the IMEX (Admission) working party.
Among other things, they will discuss the conditions imposed on third-country nationals to obtain this status and the permits granted on the basis of investment schemes.
While a person must have resided legally and continuously for 5 years in the Member State where the application for long-term residence in the EU is made, or resided for 2 years in other Member States under certain residence permits and 3 years in the Member State where the application is made, the compromise will aim to specify which residence permits are taken into account to add to the total period of 5 years.
In the first case, it is “considered that the period spent by students in the EU should be fully taken into account, which would facilitate the retention of talent in the EU”, explains the Spanish Presidency of the EU Council.
For beneficiaries of temporary protection, “the waiting period for obtaining temporary protection is minimal, so it does not seem logical to count them; this would represent an additional bureaucratic burden and would have little impact”, the Presidency also points out.
The compromise also reintroduces the Commission’s original proposal on precautions relating to residence permits obtained under investor residency programmes.
The aim here is to “find a wording that avoids creating any new burdens for the Member States and includes them in the tasks they already perform to check the continuity and legality of residence”.
It is also a question of ensuring that the Member States control these schemes, essentially because they are national schemes and because some of them do not necessarily require a continuous physical presence on the territory of the Member State or simply provide for a limited presence.
The text thus states that “in order to limit the attractiveness of investor residence schemes and taking into account the fact that not all Member States have regulated this category of residence permits, Member States should not take into account periods of residence as the holder of a residence permit granted on the basis of any investment in another Member State for the purposes of cumulating periods”.
The compromise still includes provisions for UK nationals.
It states that “all periods of continuous legal residence of UK nationals and their family members under the Withdrawal Agreement and previously under Directive 2004/38/EC will be regarded as periods of legal residence in a Member State for the purposes of accumulating the five-year period, both in one Member State and in various Member States”.
Links to documents: https://aeur.eu/f/879 ; https://aeur.eu/f/87a (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)