Hi,

Does anyone have any experience with this (http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/justice_freedom_security/free_movement_of_persons_asylum_immigration/l23034_en.htm)?  I’m a US citizen who has been living in the Netherlands for the last 10 years and I’m planning on moving to Spain to live with my Spanish girlfriend.  Theoretically, according to this directive, someone with an EU long-term resident permit should be able to move to and work in another EU country (excluding UK, Ireland and Denmark).  In practice, however, it seems this may not be quite so straight forward as each country seems to handle it differently.  To this point, I haven’t found much information about how Spain is implementing this ruling.

From what I can tell, I need to either find a job in Spain or set up myself as autonomo in order to take advantage of this directive.  There is some information in the document entitled “Movilidad de los extranjeros extracomunitarios en la Uni?n Europea (El Estatuto de Residentes de Larga Duraci?n - CE)” (http://extranjeros.mtin.es/es/InformacionInteres/FolletosInformativos/index.html) but I would greatly appreciate any other information anyone might have on how to best go about doing this or if anyone has actually done this.

Many thanks in advance!

asturias or bust,
as i understand it, the directive just waives the resident visa requirement.
if you apply for a nonworking resident card, you have to meet the economic solvency requirement, among others.
if you apply for a working resident card, you have to look for an employer to hire you. either you or the employer submits the application. set yourself up as self employed.
if you marry your spanish girlfriend or register as pareja de hecho, you can get the eu citizen family resident card.

Thanks aritz!

Guess that’s pretty much what I thought.  Definitely going to be going for a work permit but still unsure if this directive makes that application any easier or not.  I know, for example, that it does in Sweden but that, of course, doesn’t help me too much;-)  Was really excited about getting the long-term EU residence permit for this very reason but am not convinced that it actually gives me that great of an advantage over someone without it in Spain…....Would be nice to be able to tell a company that I am more or less guaranteed a work permit if offered a job but I have yet to find anything that would indicate that (or even the exact extent of the process it would involve).  At the moment, I feel like I may be in the same Catch-22 situation I was in 10 years ago when I came to Holland (no job without work permit, no work permit without job).