Do I qualify for PR?

[brexitshmexit]

Hey there,

I have a few questions that I oddly enough can't find a clear answer for: do you need CSI if you are a full-time employee? In most cases, I can't figure out if other users on this forum did have some form of health insurance when they say they were working in the UK, or if being employed is actually enough. Given that apparently workers don't need it, but no-one says anything about employees, I'm getting a bit confused by all this.

Here's my timeline in the UK:
2008-2012: degree (with year abroad in 2011) - patchy health insurance
2012-2013: employed full-time - no CSI
2013-2014: postgrad degree - no CSI
2014-2016: employed full-time - no CSI
2016: back at school for 3 months and unemployed for 3 months - no CSI (I was registered as self-employed at the time, however)
2017: employed full-time - no CSI

With those dates in mind, would my 5 years start from 2014 if full-time employment is sufficient? Or do I have no chance of getting PR until 2022?

Also, given that self-employment doesn't require CSI, can I get away with just re-registering for self-employment alongside my full-time job, or would doing so have more implications than taking private health insurance?

And finally, does anyone know if there are legal actions being taken to potentially speed up the process of having the NHS retroactively accepted as CSI or taking any other measures to help get rid of the CSI requirements for PR applicants?

I didn't want to create a new thread for this message, but let me know if it would benefit from one. Equally, I apologise if this has been asked before, my searches didn't yield anything particularly useful.

[brexitshmexit]

Thanks to the moderating team for moving my post to the right place! I eventually managed to find some answers, so I'll share them for anyone else who might be reading this thread.

1) The definition of "worker" corresponds to the EU directive definition (as determined in this document and as explained in Article 45 of this document, and not to the UK government's definition that is found on their really unhelpful page on the topic.

So as it stands, my year of study in 2013 resets my 5 year period to start in 2014 - yay...

2) As for legal actions regarding the EU Commission finding that not accepting the NHS as CSIC is a breach of EU law:

- There is a petition to reform the current PR system. There's currently around 37,000 signatures, but we all know the more the better, so if you haven't signed it and would like to, head on over here.

- Some of you might know that the European Commission considers that the NHS is good enough to be considered CSIC, and have found the UK to be in breach of EU law for not agreeing to consider it to be so:

Under the Free Movement Directive, EU citizens who settle in another EU country but do not work there may be required to have sufficient resources and sickness insurance. The United Kingdom, however, does not consider entitlement to treatment by the UK public healthcare scheme (NHS) as sufficient. This breaches EU law.

The inquiry started in 2012 and can be found here.

- An update was given in November 2016 stating the inquiry was ongoing, but there has been no more details given.

- The University of Kent has an EU Rights Clinic and they are currently trying to put together a case against the allegedly unlawful rejection of PR applications if the reason was insufficient CSIC. If that's you, please get in touch with them to help support the case.

If anyone else has other material they think is relevant to these issues, please feel free to share them. If you know of lawsuits or other court proceedings in the UK or the EU about CSIC and the NHS, I'd be grateful for more material. Finally, if anyone has any idea on how we could pressure the European Commission to either divulge some of the proceedings up to this date, or to speed up the inquiry, I would love to hear them.