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Hello all!

My husband (Belgian) is going to start working for a French university in October. He will commute to Paris once a week because, sadly for him, I have a job in London and I have a EEA family residence permit. We think that if he is considered self-sufficient, and he lives in London with me, my family permit should be still valid.

As far as I understand, there are no special requirements for self-sufficient people apart from having income in the account. Please let me know if this is correct or if I'm missing something. Also, the rules say that the income may be coming from a family member. Does this mean that an income coming from me (non-EU) is acceptable?

Now with CSI I am really at a loss because I have no idea what comprehensive sickness insurance the Home Office is looking for. Does anyone have a history of dealing with HO re CSI and having a specific CSI accepted as compliant with HO rules? Please could you give me names of insurers?

Thanks in advance

Assuming he commutes on a regular basis (weekly return to the UK) then he would be considered a frontier worker (who exercises his treaty rights), not self sufficient. Your RC is still valid. No CSI is required in this case.

And the fact that he will be receiving salary in France and pay French tax (I have no idea if it's possible to pay UK tax on French salary) is not going to affect that? Is lack of CSI not going to jeopardise my and his permanent residence application in the future? Do you have a link to something I can read on frontier workers being considered employed as normal?

In order to be a frontier worker an EU national must be working full/part time in UK even returning/travelling once or twice a week to other EU member state.

Well, in this case he doesn't qualify as a frontier worker. He will be employed full time by the French university and will be working from home most of the time while travelling to France to give lectures once a week. He will not have any UK employment (at least not at the moment). In this situation am I correct that the best route for us is to say that he's self-sufficient and comply with requirements for self-sufficient category (i.e. CSI)? Do you know if there's a specific amount of savings/income that we need to show for self-sufficiency?

If an EEA national is not frontier worker then I donot think that the treaty rights can be exercised through any other way and the same cannot meet the criteria of residence as well.

sheraz7 wrote:In order to be a frontier worker an EU national must be working full/part time in UK even returning/travelling once or twice a week to other EU member state.

It's the other way around - he is resident in the UK (over weekends) and works in another member state during the week (frontier worker).
Your example is for a frontier worker from another member state.

Jambo wrote:

sheraz7 wrote:In order to be a frontier worker an EU national must be working full/part time in UK even returning/travelling once or twice a week to other EU member state.

It's the other way around - he is resident in the UK (over weekends) and works in another member state during the week (frontier worker).
Your example is for a frontier worker from another member state.

Read the exact definition of frontier worker at below link while giving special care in reading the word 'working in uk'.
http://www.ukcisa.org.uk/International- ... -students/

OK, now I'm confused
Is there a way for him to continue exercising his treaty rights in the UK while being employed in France. I'd really like to avoid having to apply for another Tier 2 visa because each dealing with the Home Office takes off about 5 years of my life expectancy.

I thought - if he's resident in the UK, if he is tax resident in the UK (which he will be under the new tax rules because in addition to days spent in the UK he'll have connective factors in form of property and family links), then as long as we can show that he has enough means to support himself and me without becoming a burden on the state finance, i.e. be in a self-sufficient category, we're fine.

I haven't seen anywhere any indication as to what a person can and cannot do with their time in order to qualify as self-sufficient. There is no wording to the effect that a self-sufficient person can not be employed in another country. All that EEA3 is asking for is whether this person has enough money and CSI for all family members included in the application.

yagulnaz wrote:OK, now I'm confused
Is there a way for him to continue exercising his treaty rights in the UK while being employed in France.

Part-time study in the UK is an option still open to him, could even be with the Open University, you would need CSI in that case also.

I seriously don't think that he'll be open to part-time study, he has a PhD from Oxford, and so it's not going to be likely that a university will accept him for any course because it will immediately look like fraud.

I still have not heard any specific arguments why self-sufficient is not going to work in our case. Please could you let me know?

yagulnaz wrote:I seriously don't think that he'll be open to part-time study, he has a PhD from Oxford, and so it's not going to be likely that a university will accept him for any course because it will immediately look like fraud.

The Open University is happy to enrol those who have PHD's already!

I am still waiting for someone to point out to me why exactly the simple route of self-sufficient would not be applicable in this case.

I don't want to sound disinterested in furthering my husband's education, but with a full-time job in academia he'll have enough on his plate. I would much rather pay for CSI (I am still waiting to hear which CSI would be acceptable to the Home Office) and at some later point present to the HO our bank statements if we ever stay in the UK long enough to consider permanent residence.

yagulnaz wrote: I haven't seen anywhere any indication as to what a person can and cannot do with their time in order to qualify as self-sufficient. There is no wording to the effect that a self-sufficient person can not be employed in another country. All that EEA3 is asking for is whether this person has enough money and CSI for all family members included in the application.

The fact you are not understanding is the maintainence of residence in order to excercise treaty rights which cannot be exercised from overseas or by short visits. Within the UK both partners can live separately and the treaty rights can still be exercised.

I have not at any point mentioned short visits. My husband is going to be living in London with trips to Paris from Tuesday morning, returning Wednesday night during term time. I would not call 5 days out of 7 a short visit. But maybe you know something about Home Office logic that I don't know.

yagulnaz wrote:I have not at any point mentioned short visits. My husband is going to be living in London with trips to Paris from Tuesday morning, returning Wednesday night during term time. I would not call 5 days out of 7 a short visit. But maybe you know something about Home Office logic that I don't know.

Your situation is now clear and in such circumstances the self sufficiency should work as he can maintain the required amount of residence.

Read the exact definition of frontier worker at below link while giving special care in reading the word 'working in uk'.
http://www.ukcisa.org.uk/International- ... -students/

Again, that definition is for a frontier worker who works in the UK and resides in another member state. This case is the opposite - living in the UK and working in another member state. Frontier worker is not limited to one direction.

I don't understand why you prefer to go through the self sufficient route if you can go via the frontier worker route.
If you insist, then private health insurance (Bupa, WPA, AXA) would do fulfill the CSI requirement.

Except buying CSI policy what else can be a hurdle in using the mode of self sufficiency as the same income which op's EU national will earn in France can be demonstrated for self sufficiency which is more easier. Yes all above insurance provider provide CSI policies which have been accepting.

£50 per month x 12 months x 5 years = £3,000.

Sounds like a spend that can have a better use.

Jambo wrote:£50 per month x 12 months x 5 years = £3,000.

Sounds like a spend that can have a better use.

Its very usual that an EU national during his 5 years of time not stick to one type of treaty rights rather switch to different one. For your kind information there are a lot of insurance providers (if being searched) who give first year free to policy holder's partner and 2nd year 10-20% discount apart of that because the market now very competitive. And also try to compare your calculation againt the discomfort and waste of time if the application not successful because of frontier worker complications. Repeatedly the self sufficiency is simplest to demonstrate even through same income.

I think Jambo is wrong because despite frontier worker has more than one direction but what he puzzled to understand that the EU nations should work in UK even travel to his EU country every week because his treaty rights should be based in UK if supporting his non-eu family member towards eea2. Remember the frontier worker is the further branch of worker where eu nations live & work in relevant EU country but frontier worker work in UK even live other EU country. The same example can be applied in other EU countries where non-eu family members apply residence permit. Even following link also confirm same but we need to read and understand in UK sense because non-eu member is claiming residence right in UK:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc ... 108178.pdf

All he needs to get is a free EHIC card issued by his home country and thats done - CSI requirement covered.

Thanks for your input.
My husband has already spent about 1,5 years on an employed category (and before that about 5 years in student category, but his PR application was refused, of course, because he didn't have a CSI to show for his student years). He's obviously going to be looking for jobs in the UK after his contract in France ends. So in all likelihood we'll just need to show that he was still a treaty rights person during one year.

Hello Yagulnaz,
I will be in somewhat a similar situation. I am a German national, living in the UK but working full-time in France . I want to obtain a residence card for my wife (US citizen) and I am currently trying to understand, if this is possible via the frontier worker route. How did your situation work out in the end?
Many thanks.

Hello Simongab,

we didn't go for the self-sufficient or frontier worker in the end because the university my husband works for told him on the day he was supposed to sign the contract that he also needs to have residence in France to be able to sign the contract as an employee. we eventually chose to register him as self-employed (in the UK) education consultant with a fixed contract for consultancy services in France (thinking that it would be easier to deal with his self-employed status when we come up for permanent residence) than with the self-sufficient one.

Little did we know that UKBA will change the EEA3 form AGAIN and make it a lot harder to prove the self-employed status while opening a route for the EEA person to work in another EEA state as long as their main residence continues to be in the UK - have a look at the form online, it's now called EEA (PR) and is to be used instead of both EEA3 and EEA4. I don't have any further information as I've only found out about it yesterday and am still in state of shock.

Good luck!