EEA3 + WRS (exercising Treaty rights in the UK)

Hi everyone,

I need a help with working out, what exactly 'exercising Treaty rights in the UK' mean in regard to obtaining PR (through EEA3 route application)


Let's say a citizen of one of the A8 EU countries comes to the UK in 09/2008. He manages to get a job and applies for WRS. Since the WRS certificate is issued 2 months later, he fails to meet the 1 month's deadline requirement and the legal work by the law will be counted from the WRS certificate issue date, 11/2008.


This is all pretty clear and has been discussed many times on this forum.

Now, he stops working on 20th May 2009 and goes self-employed as of 25th June 2009. Then couple months later, on 2nd November 2009, he finds a full time employment, so he applies for a new WRS (this time he meets the 1 one month's deadline requirement) and carries on working it the same job until present.



What I am really interested is:

Will the exercising Treaty rights for continuous period of 5 years rule be counted after he meets the requirement of having continued registered employment for 12 months (no WRS required anymore) or the time is counted from the very beginning, given he meets the WRS rules (11/2008 in this scenario).

Will the break for more than 30 days (35 days in this scenario) in the first 12 months affect the total period of 5 years needed for PR? (Possibly disregards all the time worked until he becomes self-employed?) Normally there is 6 months off work allowed, but not sure if this applies even to people who need (-ed) WRS.


Thank you for all your comments.