Expert Info
on 24 Mar 2017
I'm British, which means that for now I'm an EU citizen (till 2019, apparently, so we have to hurry!) and my wife is Danish. That means she can move to Sweden with no problems, and I should be OK for temporary residence too.
However, we've been told that in this situation it's possible for me to apply for *permanent* residence in advance, and get a final decision before we move. And we'd much rather do it that way, and know where we stand, than wait till the application after 5 years. By that time we will have sold our UK house, bought a Swedish place, moved and put down roots... and it would be a disaster if I was turned down. We'd much rather know now.
The people on the phone at Migrationsverket don't seem to know about this procedure, but they only seem to have been trained to deal with refugees and don't know the rules on EU or Norse citizens. Does anyone here know if it really exists, and if so, how do we apply?
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Unfortunately, Brexit does mean that the answer to your question is not very clear-cut. Typically, as an EU citizen, you would not need a residence permit to live in the country. However, for the purpose of your situation, let's assume you would be following the same regulations as someone without EU citizenship.
In this case, here are a few very comprehensive pages I found on the website of the Swedish Migration Agency. It seems that the process of applying for a residence permit based on a marriage is meant to be done from outside the country, at a Swedish consulate or embassy. One snag you might come across is that it appears to me that the applicant who has the right to stay in Sweden needs to be in Sweden first, before the spouse can apply to join them? I could be misinterpreting the requirements though, and I think you'd definitely need to confirm this with a Swedish embassy or consulate in your home country.
Here are those pages from the Swedish Migration Agency that I mentioned:
I hope you find this helpful - as I said, it's difficult to pin down an answer to this kind of a question in the midst of Brexit.
Best of luck.
M