By 391 to 140 and 25 abstentions, MEPs endorsed a negotiating mandate for proposed changes to the current long-term resident directive. These include acceleration of the granting of EU long-term permits after 3 years of legal residence.
The project has several important points:
- If the new changes are approved, the period someone is obliged to legally reside in a Member State to obtain EU long-term status will be shortened from five to only three years.
- EU long-term resident status holders can move to a second Member State for work or study purposes without additional requirements (such as labor market checks or integration requirements).
- Processing applications for long-term residence within 60 days at most
- Free language courses should be offered to those required to speak a language up to the A2 level.
- Criteria for adequate resources and health insurance should be simplified and clarified.
- Automatic long-term residence status should be granted to dependent children of persons already holding such a permit.
What are the next steps?
There are still multiple rounds of discussions and approvals that need to take place. It is possible that we may witness some alterations before the spring of 2024, when the upcoming European Parliament elections are scheduled to occur. However, considering the pace of recent events, these changes may even transpire sooner than anticipated.
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