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I am a Swedish citizen living and working in Amsterdam. So far so good - EU provides great opportunities.

However, my wife is Brazilian. Since I am Swedish, not Dutch, we have caused the Dutch immigration some confusion with our application. Also, we married while living in London which didn't help the paperwork. Anyway, we have now gone through all the motions of applying for a residence permit. It has taken ages but now all paperwork finally seems to go through. I was relieved, because I thought that my wife would finally be able to go out looking for a job.

Then it struck me - a residence permit is not the same as a work permit. My question is: With the five year residence permit that my wife is about to receive, and being married to me, a EU citizen, is she then free to look for a job here or does she need to separately apply for a work permit?

Thanks in advance,

Lennart

We have now just received our permits and on hers it says that a work permit is not required.

It's all sorted and we're happy. She can now go out looking for jobs.

I think that our case is still fairly unusual - a non-Dutch EU citizen (Swedish) with a non-EU wife (Brazilian) seeking residency in the Netherlands - moving here from a third EU country (UK).

In more complicated cases I don't think decisions are very consistent at any immigration authority... Maybe we were just lucky, or we hit an unknown golden rule somewhere.