Students to get residence permit for 2 years

The government on Thursday submitted a bill to parliament for implementing an EU directive on the conditions of entry and residence of third-country nationals for the purposes of research, studies, training and voluntary service.

Provisions in the Aliens Act that overlap with the directive would be repealed, said an official press release.

Residence permits for researchers and students would be extended and job-seeking and entrepreneurship would be encouraged through a residence permit granted for this.

The acts are scheduled to enter into force on 15 May 2018.

The goal of this act implementing the EU directive on students and researchers is to enable the students to stay and work in the EU countries after completion of their studies.

With the new act, all researchers would receive a researcher’s residence permit, irrespective of whether the research is in an employment relationship or, for example, receiving a grant.

The residence permit would be granted continuously for two years. Currently, a permit may be temporary or continuous, and in principle it is granted for one year. The extended residence permit would be issued for a maximum of four years.

All students would continue to be granted a temporary residence permit, but, as a rule, it would be granted for two years instead of one year, if the conditions (including sufficient financial resources) are met throughout the stay.

If the conditions were not fulfilled for two years, it would still be possible to grant a permit for one year. The extended permit would also be issued for up to two years at a time.

The EU directive concerns higher education students but, for the sake of clarity, provisions applying to all students would be incorporated into the new act. Permit conditions would remain largely unchanged, and tuition fees would now be included in the act as a condition of granting a permit, if the applicant is covered by a requirement to pay tuition fees.