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I fear we may have misjudged how complex this process will be.

My husband (French) and I married in August last year. I am a British citizen by birth. We moved to the UK together from France in July 2014. With Brexit happening we decided it would be best to make sure we are both citizens of the same country, just in case.

I had got the impression that because we are married he could apply for citizenship after 3 years of living in the UK, but now I'm reading more into it I believe I have it wrong and he actually needs an ILR, which takes 5 years to gain, before we can even start considering citizenship. Is this correct? So he can apply for ILR in July 2019, and being married to me he can then immediately apply for citizenship?

This has me so panicked because if Article 50 is triggered by March this year we will just fall short of getting the application in before we leave the EU and who knows how that will talk to all the visas etc up.


Thanks for any guidance you can give.

ILR is not for EEA nationals afaik. EEA DCPR (Document Certifying Permanent Residence) is what you're looking for. Which you can get after 5 (continuous) years of exercising treaty rights. So not much different in your case.

He may want to use the QP form to get a residence document (I forgot how it's called, but something like that), but obviously it's not quite the same as DCPR or BC. But otherwise you'll probably have to wait 3 years for him to be eligible for BC.

Your French husband will have to acquire PR by exercising treaty rights, typically by working in the UK, for five continuous years.

Once he has acquired PR and proof of it (DCPR), he can immediately proceed to apply for naturalisation.

As a British citizen of an EEA citizen, you can't sponsor your husband either for PR (because you are not an EEA citizen for the purposes of immigration) or for ILR (because EEA citizens are ineligible for leave granted under the Immigration Act) and he must meet the requirements on his own.

As an EEA member myself here's what I have done and what your husband should do:

1) Remain in the UK for 5 continuous years and exercise treaty rights. After these 5 years he must apply for a Permanent Residency Card for EEA Nationals: https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... orm-eea-pr

2) With this card he can then apply for British citizenship straight away (as he is married to a British citizen):
https://www.gov.uk/becoming-a-british-citizen

All in all he will have to have stayed and worked in the UK for 5 years before he can do anything else.