Bringing family to Europe, reunification rules for Indian workers

An Indian worker employed in the European Union can bring family under Council Directive 2003/86/EC, adopted on 22 September 2003. The sponsor needs a residence permit valid for at least one year, sufficient income, accommodation and insurance, and member states are allowed to impose a waiting period of up to two years first.

What the sponsor has to show

Article 3 of the directive sets two conditions on the sponsor. The first is a residence permit valid for at least one year. The second is a reasonable prospect of obtaining permanent residence, which is where authorities test whether the stay is temporary. A seasonal worker usually fails on that condition alone, however valid the contract.

Article 7 covers the resources, and this is where most applications are decided. The sponsor has to show accommodation regarded as normal for a comparable family, sickness insurance for himself and the family members, and stable resources sufficient to maintain them without recourse to the social assistance system. Each state calculates that against its own minimum wage and social assistance rates, so the same salary can clear the threshold in one member state and fall short in another.

The directive also fixes who counts as family and how long the answer may take. Article 4(1) makes the spouse and the minor children a mandatory category: once the conditions are met, the member state has to authorise their entry. Parents, adult unmarried children and an unmarried partner sit in Article 4(2) and 4(3), which each state may open or leave closed, and most leave them closed. Article 5(4) caps the wait, requiring the decision to be notified in writing no later than nine months after the application is lodged, extendable where the examination is genuinely complex. Article 13 then gives the family member a first residence permit valid for at least one year.

Article 8 allows the waiting. A member state may require the sponsor to have resided lawfully on its territory for a period not exceeding two years before reunification is granted. That is where the practical difference is largest. Where the requirement is one year, a welder arriving from India can apply early in the second year; where it is two, the same contract puts the family's arrival in year three.

When the family gets its own status, and where the rules do not apply

At the start the family's residence is tied to the sponsor, so the spouse holds a permit that depends on the worker's own. Article 15 does not leave it that way. After five years of residence, the spouse and children who have reached majority are entitled to an autonomous residence permit. That matters on separation, divorce, or a change of employer, because the family's right to stay no longer rests on the sponsor's contract.

There is also a geographic exception that planning often misses. Denmark and Ireland are not bound by the directive, as EUR-Lex records, so reunification there runs on national law and none of the articles above apply.

What this means for the employer

For an employer this is a retention question rather than a private one. A destination with a two year waiting period makes a three year stay harder for the same worker, and it shows up in attrition. Routes where reunification opens earlier, notably the EU Blue Card, generally carry lighter family conditions, and those are set out in the EU Blue Card directive.

The five year count runs against a second door as well. After the same period the worker becomes eligible for long term resident status, explained in EU long term resident status after five years. The permit timings that start the whole calendar are in the EU work permit timeline by country.

Before a recruitment starts, three numbers are worth establishing: the waiting period the destination has chosen, the figure its income threshold is pegged to, and its accommodation standard. Those three decide whether the family arrives in year two or year four, and with it how long the worker stays in the job.