Richir2909 wrote:Thanks Iira
Have you got insurance covering the past few years however?
That's the one, has anyone been successful on the basis of missing documents like insurance certificate covering the PAST!!! years. This is one of the requirements of both the Directive 2004/38 AND the Immigration (EEA) Regulations 2006. If you don't have one you clearly fall foul of the strict interpretation of the rules. But, obviously if the case had gone to court, the court would reiterate the principle of proportionality.
I am in the same situation, I am an EEA national who worked:
June/2004- Jan/2008 and
Oct/2008- Present
But, between Jan/2008 and Oct/2008, around 10 months, I went travelling to India for 6 months and upon my return, sought employment and lived in the UK as usual.
I will not go into detail about the worker route, but the self-sufficiency is the problem.
I do not have the back dated certif. of insurance! but I never claimed anyth. Don't know what I'm going to do. But, I called them now and will see what they could advise me.
N.B. The guy told me that if I weren't working now and obtained the Private Health NOW, it would be OK for the PAST period!!!
Everyone, this is good news.
But in my case, I am working now so don't require one? the guy was puzzled and put me on hold, and as usual it got cut off in 5 min. after that.
N.B.
Another development, I called again and was told what I feared I would be. A person loses his/her entitlement if they don't meet the requirements of the law. Basically, if you can't provide one covering the past period, you are not eligible and need to start the process all over again.
The thing is, any caseworker will tell you this as they do not have the authority to use discretion, they need to tick boxes per each requirement, if they don't tick the box, you don't get the paper. It is quite another thing to try and persuade someone with authority that the whole idea behind requiring people to have private insurance is not to have them as a burden to society! If you are not a burden, the aim is achieved. So, the sanctions must be PROPORTIONATE! On the face of it, it would seem disproportionate to allow ME for instance to lose this hard-earned entitlement after having worked for 3 years, only because in the period of unemployment/self-sufficiency I didn't have the sickness insurance. But I never claimed anything anyway! So, was no burden to the society.
If I were putting my argument forward in the ECJ, it could potentially work, but unfortunately there are SO MANY!!! obstacles to get that far, and so many years' wait, that, by the time you get there you would have earned another 5 years' entitlement.
Anyway, it's not the court, but an administrative body which you deal with and it's a shame that many people get caught out like that unwary.
My advice is- if you are still on a self-sufficiency route, take out private health insurance (AXA etc would suffice) and apply. If you are lucky, you will get a caseworker who will ignore the fact (which he SHOULDN'T really) that you didn't have one in the past, so your exercise of Treaty Rights technically was interrupted.
Other than that, it will require another court hearing regarding THIS PARTICULAR scenario, where a person is DISPROPORTIONATELY being sanctioned for not having a paperwork for the past, which is bureaucratic only.
If you're still reading, I hope you got the gist of the story
