nortada
Well-Known Member
Please outline what caused the shock.
Spanish Residency - Registration & Matriculation Tax
- Thread starter Phil_A
- Start date
RupertW
Well-Known Member
I have just applied for and got an Irish passport by ancestry and my wife is just proving her Polish citizenship by ancestry so she will have a Polish one.
Alicatt
Well-Known Member
The UK asked for and the EU agreed to British citizens to be covered by the Withdrawal Agreement, Belgium has implemented that as issuing a separate ID card for British Citizens, the M card and M+ card valid for 5 years and 10 years respectively. Europeans and other third country nationals would normally be entitled to an E or E+ card or an N (N+) for frontier workers and F (F+) cards for family reunification, there are others like special ID cards for those that work for the EU, diplomats, and military forces.
1) There has been problems implementing the M card, none are printed yet and the software is not functioning to enrol people into the peoples register or the foreigners register for inhabitants of Belgium.
2) On 3rd January the Belgian Govt's ibz (immigration dept) issued a letter to all Brits in Belgium telling them they had to come in to their local gemeente and exchange their other ID cards for the M card, my own gemeente told me to wait as they thought there was going to be problems.
3) Many Brits went into their gemeente and exchanged their ID cards but as the M card is not ready they all got 2 pieces of paper (called Annex 56 and 58) the annex 56 is basically a paper that says you are not registered as a resident and are applying for residency and that your name has been put on to the foreigners register, annex 58 states what documents you have submitted and what you are applying for.
4) When introducing the M card the government has not listed the M card on the list of legal proof of residency in Belgium, it needs to get a royal decree for that to happen, it can be done quite simply by the government but it took more than 5 years for the last time when they put the Special ID card on the list after Belgium lost a challenge in the EU courts when Belgium did not want to add the card to the list.
So all those people that handed in their E cards are now non residents, the lawyer has advised everyone to hang on to their E card until they can be issued with the M card and those who are going for citizenship this year to not apply for an M card at all.
That was what has caused the shock to a lot of us that want to get citizenship, we hope it is only temporary and that our time in Belgium counts
In my own case my wife and I had applied for Family reunification as my wife is Belgian, my wife is on an invalidity pension. We knew that my wife's pension was below the level for letting me get an F card but we had talked to the gemeente about it and they said that my wife's income from property rental would not count towards her income (there is no income tax on personal property rental income) I had submitted my income which shows that I support my wife along with the title deeds of the house I bought in Belgium in 2007. The ibz is given 6 months to accept or reject the application and after 6months if nothing is said then it is an automatic issue of the ID card and residency, 3 days before the 6months and it was rejected as my wife's pension was too low, my income did not count and the gemeente had stripped out my wife's rental income which later the ibz said does count. However it was now January 18 and ibz won't allow me to go for an E card or F card and I have to go for an M card. The rules for the M card are a lot tougher than for an E card but the extra conditions are of no problem for me, just background checks etc.
Current thinking by the gemeente and others in the immigration dept the M card won't be ready to be issued before May this year.
