ILR for EU citizen

[Julian11]

So this isn't relevant to me since I have a naturalisation application which will hopefully be all sorted soon but I am wondering for a friend of mine, given something a caseworker said to me...

She is an EU citizen (France) and came to the UK in 2008. She's married to a British citizen.

My caseworker said that in such a scenario, an EU citizen could apply for ILR and then apply for naturalisation immediately based on the ILR. Is that accurate? Her treaty rights stuff is quite complicated with loads of switches, so when I mentioned this she was keen on going down this route instead (despite the much higher costs!).

Is this actually possible, and if so, with which form/how, given that she has no visa in her passport and ILR normally begins with a visa of some sort?

[CR001]

ILR is under the UK Immigration rules and don't apply to EU citizens.

EU citizens apply or attain PR (permanent residency) after 5 years of exercising treaty rights (work, study, self sufficient, having CSI for the latter two, etc) . If your friend has attained PR with 5 years of exercising treaty rights, she could then apply for citizenship based on being a spouse of a British Citizen.

What are the complications with her 'treaty rights stuff' ?

[Julian11]

So EU citizens can't apply for it at all and thus switch to UK immigration rules? Strange that my caseworker advised that.

She has a period of studies when she didn't have CSI I think. Oh well - she doesn't have much longer to wait to have a five year period anyway so I'll just advise her to wait a bit more.

[CR001]

The caseworker might have misunderstood your query. As soon as she acquires PR, automatically or confirmation applied for (equivalent of ILR), she can immediately apply for citizenship and would not have to wait the 12 months on PR first.

Did she do any work during the period of studies??