EEA Application Fee Challenge

[bluecole2]

Hello People,

Just wondering if anyone has tried to challenge ukba's eea applications fee or is everyone applying so far happy with it, considering that It has perhaps made ho's services worse in regards to hiccups with payments, double charges etc.

Are there any formal challenges yet?

[CR001]

You are complaining about the low eea fees??

Try the UK Immigration route fees, it has cost me in excess of £8,000 from entry clearance visa start to British Citizenship for us.

[Directive/2004/38/EC]

I think it is wide open to challenge. Somebody who has applied just needs to take legal action.

[Obie]

You are complaining about the low eea fees??

Try the UK Immigration route fees, it has cost me in excess of £8,000 from entry clearance visa start to British Citizenship for us.

Well you choose to come in . You had no right to. You had to apply for it.
An EEA national derived these rights from the treaties. I

[Tristan]

I believe they justify the fee by claiming it is an optional document that is not needed. But then try finding employment or housing without it (very hard for an EEA2 thanks to laws that specifically require this document), I would say, for all practical purposes, it is in fact a legal requirement to possess. Furthermore, if this was merely optional I would expect proper customer service for our money, I'd say that is somewhat lacking.

As for the poster mentioning £8,000 entry clearance... you can't really compare EU rights based movement to UK permission based immigration. The UK gave you the permission to come here, for an EEA national it is their right to be here.

[357mag]

Thats a debatable point. If you are married and your spouse is in another country it should be considered a right under the laws of nature for you to be together and yet UK charge a restrictive amount of money for you to be reunited along with an impossible, for many, level of income.
The EEA guidance does still say that no charge should be made for treaty right but there is the caveat that national rules might include a handling fee, kind of opens the door to charge what they like.

I said laws of nature, maybe that should read Gods law, after all when you are married two become one.

[CR001]

Thats a debatable point. If you are married and your spouse is in another country it should be considered a right under the laws of nature for you to be together and yet UK charge a restrictive amount of money for you to be reunited along with an impossible, for many, level of income.
The EEA guidance does still say that no charge should be made for treaty right but there is the caveat that national rules might include a handling fee, kind of opens the door to charge what they like.

I said laws of nature, maybe that should read Gods law, after all when you are married two become one.

Thanks 357mag - my British Ancestry goes back 1000's of years, last being my maternal grandmother and grandfather and my husband is British too, so yes, I agree with what you say! So unfortunate that those of us that can prove British spouse and a long line of UK ancestry and ties with original documents dating back to early 1700's, have to jump through so many hoops. I have at least reached the end of my immigration/naturalisation journey, so the line of British ancestry for my family will continue through myself and my daughter.

[Obie]

Considering the UK does not value christian values a lot, wonder how far you legitimate assessment will get us.

[Wanderer]

I seem to remember one of the EU Diktats being that EU Rules must not put the local citizen at a disadvantage or somesuch, so it's surely possible to argue that either UK visas should be free, or EU visas/PR etc should cost the same as local citizens have to pay.

One or the other surely?

[dalebutt]

The fact that a British is married to a non EU citizen should not give them an automatic right to come to the UK, the same logic could apply as to why the British cannot move and live with their spouse in the spouse's Country? Treaty of Rome is an enshrined right, the UK signed up to it, the government was not coerced into signing that treaty. EU citizens have an automatic right to live here and rightly so.

It is a written law that the EU visas must be free of cost, the question should be put to the UK government why they seem to think marriage visa is a money making venture, the equivalent of this visa in Ireland is completely free.