Citizens of EEA Member States
Citizens of countries in the European Economic Area (other than British and Irish citizens) and Swiss citizens obtain permanent residence status automatically after five years' residence in the United Kingdom exercising Treaty rights rather than ILR. The rights of EEA citizens are not governed by UK Immigration Regulations but rather the EEA Regulations.
Under the law as it existed between 2 October 2000 and 29 April 2006, a citizen of an EEA state or Switzerland could be granted permanent residence on application after four years' residence in the United Kingdom exercising Treaty rights (five years from 3 April 2006). Prior to 2 October 2000, citizens of EEA states were deemed to be permanent residents immediately upon taking up residence in the UK to exercise Treaty rights.
The change in the law in 2000 was retroactive. Hence, for example, a French citizen who arrived to work in the UK on 1 July 1986 would have been treated as a permanent resident between that date and 1 October 2000. From 2 October 2000, the status would be reverted to that of a temporary resident if an application for ILR was not made. On 30 April 2006, with five years' residence exercising Treaty rights accrued, that person regained permanent resident status.
Read more about this topic: Indefinite Leave To Remain
Famous quotes containing the words citizens, member and/or states:
“Who are we? And for what are we going to fight? Are we the titled slaves of George the Third? The military conscripts of Napoleon the Great? Or the frozen peasants of the Russian Czar? No—we are the free born sons of America; the citizens of the only republic now existing in the world; and the only people on earth who possess rights, liberties, and property which they dare call their own.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“Every member of the family of the future will be a producer of some kind and in some degree. The only one who will have the right of exemption will be the mother ...”
—Ruth C. D. Havens, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“It is impossible for a stranger traveling through the United States to tell from the appearance of the people or the country whether he is in Toledo, Ohio, or Portland, Oregon. Ninety million Americans cut their hair in the same way, eat each morning exactly the same breakfast, tie up the small girls’ curls with precisely the same kind of ribbon fashioned into bows exactly alike; and in every way all try to look and act as much like all the others as they can.”
—Alfred Harmsworth, Lord Northcliffe (1865–1922)