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For your residence in the United Kingdom to be considered continuous, you should not be absent from the United Kingdom for more than six months each year. Longer absences for compulsory military service will not affect your residence. Additionally, a single absence of a maximum of 12 months for important reasons such as pregnancy, child birth, serious illness, study, vocational training or posting overseas will not affect your residence.
In Article 16(3) of Directive 2004/38 it states that temporary absences of 6 months a year would not break the continuity of your residence in order to qualify for permanent residence status. So if you entered your host country in the month of February, each "annual period" for you would then run from February of one year to February of the next year, am I correct? Would I be right in saying in that case that if you went away in say September of one year, you would be able to come back in August of the next year at the very latest? So your time away would look like this:
In this annual period: September to February = 5 months
In the next annual period: February to August = 6 months
Thus it's 11 consecutive months that you've been away, but in each annual period it only amounts to 5 months away in one period, and 6 months away in the next period. Would this kind of absence still qualify you for permanent residence status? Or is it the case that you cannot be away for more than six CONSECUTIVE months? If not that then is it that you cannot be away for more than 6 months in total in any given 12 month period whether it coincides with your "annual periods" or not? Please could you clarify, it is confusing.
So judging from that, Your Europe seems to think that there shouldn't be any absences of more than 6 months in a GIVEN year. The UK just looks at the months you are absent in EACH yearly block. That cleared up the confusion then .In order not to lose your right of residence in another EU country you would need to be outside the country for less than 6 months in a given year or for a period not exceeding 12 months in total for serious reasons such as pregnancy, military service or posting abroad (Article 16 of Directive 2004/38 applies).
Therefore, a consecutive period of absence of 11 months would be allowed once for serious reasons during the five year period that is taken into account for calculating permanent residence.
In recent correspondence with the UK s Home Office, the European Operational Policy Team stated as follows:
The Directive, regulations and associated guidance do not specify exactly when any year is calculated from but caseworkers are advised to consider the 5 year period counting back from the date PR is automatically acquired. For example, if PR was acquired today, the countback for absence purposes would be in yearly blocks from 19 May 2009 to 19 May 2014 (19 May 2009 to 19 May 2010 and so on).
Chapter 6 of the European Casework Instructions dealing with permanent residence currently instructs caseworkers that Continuity of residence is not affected by temporary absences (generally not exceeding 6 months per year) :
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/s ... apter6.pdf
While the above rules apply for the UK, they do give a useful indication of how the Directive would be applied in your situation.
I'd always thought that single absence not exceeding 12 months is fine for important reasons. However, I'm not sure if one can be away for short visits to other countries after being away for 12months. That's what I wanted to know.chaoclive wrote:I have heard that 6 months continuous absence is enough to break residence, never mind 12 months!
Yes continuity of residence of a person holding a RC (and so who does not have settled status in UK) would be broken by an absence from UK of 1 year.logical_1 wrote:Would the continuity of residence be broken if non-eu and eu partner both left the country for 12 consecutive months for study. The only person who will be studying would be the non-eu partner.
Also after being away for 12 consecutive months, would a person be able to go on short holidays which would be less than 6 months in the years to come.
To break it down for example:
Residence card issued in let's say September 2013
12 month continuous absence from September 2013-September 2014
Short holidays with duration less than 6 months from September 2015
With the dates mentioned above could someone please be able to clarify if what's mentioned above would break the continuity if residence.
Thanks in advance
Continuity of EU-law residence (in UK) is not broken in EU law by absence of less than 6 months per year.