From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Tue Sep 02 2003 - 04:21:53 MDT
>Which countries have the most friendly policies?
Barbara,
My best guess from observations, is the smaller the better, and
in the direction of central and Eastern Europe.
A more general discussion-
I'm sure that you know that within the EU, travel (business and
pleasure) generally doesn't require passports or papers, with the
exception of Great Britain, where you need to show a passport upon
entering from other EU countries. This ease-of-travel legally
supercedes the laws of the individual countries. (I used this when I
was waiting five months for my Italian permesso di soggiorno, not
legally permitted by Italian laws, to leave Italy, but I needed
to attend work meetings elsewhere in the EU). This is perhaps similar
to traveling within the U.S., but you'll still find wide variations in
the rules and customs of the EU member countries when you need to
stay longer for work and living.
So that kind of ease-of-travel is an incentive to keeping work
within the EU member countries. I found, so far that the nearby
nonEU countries (central and eastern Europe) are also easy to travel
to/from for work and pleasure, also given either a US passport,
or an EU passport.
I don't know what are the rules for living longer than three months
in each of the EU member countries, but now after my experience in
Italy, Germany was a breeze. The only necessary document in Germany
was a work visa, which is dependent upon having a job and health
insurance (no exceptions). With that document you can generally live
and work as any other person in that society. That is, rent a flat,
work, see a doctor, own a car, attend classes or university, open a
bank account. You can't vote unless you're a citizen, as usual.
I have a colleague who took a sabbatical this past winter in France,
and it seemed to be difficult, workwise, for him, using his old US
habits. In France, his work Institute closed on the weekends, and he
needed to climb over the locked fence to get into the Institute
building to do his work on a Saturday or Sunday. My experience in
Germany and other places working in Northern Europe (Italy too), is
that I was never 'locked out' of doing my work on the weekends (even
though it is not typical).
Italy is the other extreme than Germany for living long-term as
nonEU person. The country seems to be moving through a xenophobic phase
now with new laws in place in the last year for foreigners, perhaps not
so different from the U.S.'s INS (but in Italy the laws 'bend'). You
cannot live in Italy for more than 3 months without a work visa (15
steps involved, some months to achieve), and also a permesso di
soggiorno (another 15 steps involved, five months to achieve). That
gets you working in the country, but you still must have a residenza
certificate (another few weeks to achieve, say) to open a bank
account, own a car, have a credit card. The next piece of paper for
owning property, say, is an Italian Identity Card, which requires
all previous pieces of paper. In another week, I will likely have the
last document, but I've been working at these pieces of paper now for
one year, involved with three different Italian police agencies
(Carabinieri, Questura, Local Municipal Police), City Hall, and
assorted other agencies. Note that if you are alone, you are not
knowledgeable about 'Italian ways' and don't know that each rule and
law can be interpreted in an infinite number of ways, and so will
appear as a stupid foreigner and the law won't bend for you. That
is, you will have to acquire an order of magnitude more stamps,
signatures, and approvals than the average Italian. Italy runs on
pieces of stamped papers, and not very well, I might add.
I'm asking questions of foreigners working in other EU countries,
more for curiosity, however, since I'm set on being in Italy for a
long while. I think I've experienced some extremes of the spectrum
for working and living conditions in Europe.
Amara
(P.S. starting next May, my Latvian passport makes my life in the EU
considerably easier, in terms of paperwork.)
-- *********************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara@amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ *********************************************************************** "Never squat with your spurs on." -- Texan Proverb
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