Moving from China to the Netherlands

Hi,
I've been reading various forums and reading, or trying to read the EC Treaty and various EU directives and I seem to be getting more and more confused!

This is my situation:
I'm British and my boyfriend is Chinese. We have been living together in China for the last 2 years and would like to move to the Netherlands and register as self-employed as we established freelance translators. We also want to get married and we have enough and make enough money to support ourselves.

The first thing that is confusing me is that my understanding was that if two people wanted to get married in the Netherlands then one of them had to be a Dutch citizen, but then I have read threads where people of different nationalities have got married there with one of the partners being from an EU member state. Which is it? I should probably add it's a gay marriage or civil partnership etc if that makes a difference.

If it is the case that we can't get married in the Netherlands then we will go to Canada where they don't have the residency laws.

If we were married in Canada and then moved to the Netherlands, I understand that my spouse would then be treated exactly the same as me being an EU citizen, is that correct? Even if he is Chinese?

If that is the case, what would be the best way for us to go about setting up as self-employed in the Netherlands? Could we just enter on a tourist visa to begin with? I wouldn't need a visa being British but I assume he would need one because he is Chinese. Should we apply to enter as self-employed?

I guess the thing that is worrying me the most is that he will be refused entry because he is Chinese even though we are married.

Any advice or guidance you could give me would be greatly appreciated.
Mark

You might want to think about getting married as separate from moving.

If you have a history together, and proof of that history, then you do not need to be married.

Your partner has a right of free movement with you under Directive 2004/38/EC (see http://eumovement.wordpress.com/directive-200438ec/), but only so long as you are traveling together.

Thank you for replying. You're right, I've been thinking about marriage and moving at the same time, making everything appear even more confusing.

We want to get married/enter a civil partnership anyway, just for our own personal reasons and not purely for aiding immigration so we are going to go to Canada first, come back to China for a while to save more money and then move to the Netherlands.

Thank you for the link to the EU directive, I'll have a good read of that as it sounds very promising.
Mark

Wherever you get married, your partner will not be treated as a Dutch citizen. You can work in Holland and as his partner, he will have to right to work because of your partnership.
There are also a bunch of documentation issues for Holland too so you really should go back to the ind.nl website and http://english.justitie.nl/ to get this information straight.

You mention Canada but would it not be possible to register the Civil Partnership in the UK? That is your partner could apply for a, well, not a Wedding Visitor visa, but a Civil Partnership Visitor visa.

Following the issue of that the two of you could fly to the UK and duly register your Civil Partnership. And after that, apply for an EEA Family Permit at the Dutch embassy in the UK.

A little bit old now, but how did you guys do?

Did you go?

Graham Weifang

Very old indeed...