EU citizens can live in any other country of EU (except UK and Ireland) without visa’s, basically as if it’s a single country, they can travel anywhere they want, work anywhere they want and live anywhere they want for as long as they want, all with just their citizenship and passport. They can also travel to Switzerland and Norway freely.
However, can they also live and work in those two countries or it is only restricted to traveling? Since Norway and Switzerland are both in the Shengen zone, but neither are part of the EU.
The UK (for now) and Ireland are also included in that, as are the other EU countries that aren’t in Schengen. People just have to stop at a checkpoint and show their passport or ID card on their way in.
I thought I read a post that said that to live in a different EU country “sort of” permanently, you still needed to register with the local authorities and get assorted permits, ID, etc. it wasn’t as simple as moving from Omaha to Los Angles.
In Norway, you need to register within three months. If you have work you can normally stay indefinitely.
So you can travel to Norway and have three months to find employment. Alternatively, you can stay for longer without income if you can show that you have the means to support yourself. About 22 000 EUR for one person.
Nitpick: EU citizens can travel, settle, live and work anywhere in the EU,including the UK and Ireland.
EU citizens can travel, settle, live and work in Norway and (to all intents and purposes) in Switzerland (and Swiss and Norwegian citizens have corresponding rights in the EU). The only tweak in the Swiss case is that, in areas of high unemployment, employer prefer Swill citizens over EU citizens when filling vacancies. But it’s not clear that this actually happens very much, or at all.
Mrs. FtG has a friend who lives in Germany and commutes to Switzerland. It’s such a simple, ordinary thing compared to what happens in a lot of other places.
Moving from one state to another within the US also requires the new resident to acquire new driver’s license/ID, vehicle title and registration, insurance, business or professional licenses, etc. There is usually a 30-90 day grace period for this, after which it is a violation of the law(but penalties are almost never assessed).
Citizens of Croatia cannot (yet) freely move to Switzerland or Austria. However these transitional arrangements are strictly time limited. After a set number of years Croatian citizens will have the same rights of freedom of movement as any other EU citizen.
It’s not just a question of ease of movement. What of those who have already moved, set up a business/career, home and family, or retired? Suddenly, they’d be in legal limbo as to their status, not only for employment, but also for entitlements to healthcare and other benefits. And we’re talking millions of people.
True, there has been contingency planning,and in the UK there’s a programme and administration set up for people in such a system to register for “settled status”, but our Home Office has never covered itself in glory in such situations: it’s a cumbersome, time-consuming and expensive process, requiring people to document and account for their lives in a way they never thought they would need to.
Simple answer: Norway, yes; EU freedom of movement rules allow citizens from one EU country to live and work in another EU country without the need for a visa or a work permit. Norway is not an EU Member State, but is is part of the EEA - the European Economic Area, which replicates the EU’s freedom of movement rules. The EEA encompasses all of the EU plus Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein. Switzerland is not an EEA member, and consequently EU citizens do need a Swiss work permit to work there. It is, however, a Schengen country, meaning there are no passport inspections as you cross the border from the EU into Switzerland.
Swiss cantons currently provide work permits automatically to EU citizens; about 10 years ago when I worked in Basel it wasn’t officially automatic but it was pretty much “here’s my passport, here’s my contract; here’s your filled form”. No residence permit needed.
The requirements you have only kick in after some time (which time depends on the requirement) and tend to be the same as for nationals. I can be in another country for two years before needing to move my UHC to be based there, for example, but there are countries which require everybody’s place of residence be registered (even if for one night). If you ever spent a night in a legal hotel in one of these countries the cops have a record of it, but you never needed to register with the cops: the hotel did it for you. The procedures are designed to be as simple and unobstrusive as possible.
My Brazilian-with-Italian-Foreigner’s-ID coworker took half a morning to get Spanish ID and driver’s licenses for him, his wife (who had dual Italian and Brazilian nationality) and their kids; both the general ID and the driver’s licenses were treated as “change of address”, so they got them for the cost of having pictures taken. They didn’t even need to all go to the appropriate offices, he was able to do it for all four. Him and the kids were in the process of obtaining Italian nationality: the process was not interrupted by the move to Spain (don’t ask me the exact details, but apparently since they hadn’t thought of registering the Brazil-born kids with the Italian consulate at birth, they did need to do some paperwork for them to obtain their mother’s nationality).
You can get those living in any other country, the commute can be by plane. The rules will have changed, but one of my coworkers way back then lived in London and only came to the office once every 30 days: that was enough to count as a “commuter” by the laws of Basel Canton.
I wasn’t suggesting you had to be from one of those 3 countries, I was just describing the daily reality. I know several people who commute into Geneva from France (UNEP and ILO), and they’re from all over the place, not just the EU.
I know. But I didn’t reply that you could be from other countries: I replied that you can live in other countries than those three, travel to Switzerland one day out of every 30 calendar days and still count as a commuter. hands coffee to MrDibble
It is not Swiss citizens that have priority in getting employed, but all people already living in Switzerland which have a work permit. Also, it is applied by job types and is only applied if the unemployment rate is higher than a certain percentage for the specific job type.
Getting a work permit as an EU citizen is very easy (if you have a job contract) and consists mainly of filling out a form (which is mostly done by the employer anyways).