Working in Europe

Applying for Jobs in Another EU Country

EU citizens need no work permit, but qualification recognition, registration, social security, tax and a locally formatted CV still apply. The order to do them in.

If you hold citizenship of an EU country, you can take a job in any other member state under the same conditions as its own nationals. There is no permit to apply for and no sponsor licence for the employer to hold. That removes the largest obstacle non-EU applicants face and leaves five smaller ones that people underestimate precisely because the big one is gone: registration, professional recognition, social security, tax, and a CV that reads as local.

This is general information rather than legal or tax advice, and the relevant national authority in each country is the only source that binds.

What free movement gives you, precisely

For the first three months you can stay in another EU country without registering as a resident, although some countries ask you to report your presence. Carry a valid national identity card or passport at all times, because several countries require it and can fine you for not having it.

To stay beyond three months you register with the local authority, and the procedure is national rather than European. After five continuous years of legal residence you acquire permanent residence, which does not need renewing.

Registration is also how you get the identifier that everything else in the country runs on. In practice this is the first administrative task after arrival, and until it is done you will struggle to open a bank account or be paid. The identifier has a different name in every country: a BSN in the Netherlands, a PPS number in Ireland, a NIE in Spain, a personnummer in Sweden, and in Germany the Anmeldung at the local registration office is what leads to your tax identification number. Check what your destination calls it before you arrive, and find out what the appointment backlog looks like, because in some cities it is measured in weeks.

Regulated professions are the real gate

For most jobs, nobody validates your degree. The employer looks at it, decides, and hires you. The gate applies only to regulated professions, meaning those where the country requires a specific qualification, a state examination or registration with a professional body before you can practise. Whether a profession is regulated differs between countries: the same job can be regulated in France and unregulated in Sweden.

There are three routes through.

1. Automatic recognition. Doctors, nurses responsible for general care, pharmacists, architects, veterinary surgeons and dentists benefit from harmonised minimum training requirements, so recognition follows from submitting proof of qualification.
2. The general system. Everyone else in a regulated profession applies for recognition to the competent authority in the destination country. Authorities must acknowledge receipt of your application within one month, and Your Europe puts the decision deadline at three months from receipt of complete documentation.
3. Temporary or occasional service provision. If you are providing services across the border rather than establishing yourself, a prior written declaration may be enough instead of full recognition, and you need to show at least one year of professional experience in the previous ten.

For a handful of professions, including nurses, pharmacists, physiotherapists, mountain guides and real estate agents, there is a European Professional Card, an electronic procedure that makes submission and tracking easier.

Academic recognition is a different thing from professional recognition, and people conflate them. If you simply want a foreign degree understood by an employer or a university, the ENIC-NARIC network is the entry point. That is useful even for unregulated work, because a comparability statement removes a question from every interview.

Social security and healthcare

The general rule is that you are insured in the country where you work, and the contributions stop in the old one. Four forms cover the transitions.

Two of these are worth acting on before you move. Request the U1 from your current social security institution while you are still in the country and still known to it. And if you are currently receiving unemployment benefit and intend to job-hunt abroad, look into the U2 before you go, because it has to be arranged in advance and cannot be retrofitted.

Tax is the part with no European answer

There are no EU-wide rules on how EU nationals living or working outside their home country are taxed. It is governed by national law and by bilateral treaties between the two countries. That means the only reliable answers come from the two tax administrations concerned, and the year in which you move is the one that generates the confusion, because both countries may consider you resident for part of it.

Three things to check before you accept an offer: whether the destination taxes worldwide income or only local income, whether a treaty exists between the two countries and how it allocates employment income, and whether the destination has any special regime for incoming workers. Several countries do have such a regime, they change, and they are worth several thousand euros a year to someone who applies in time and are worth zero to someone who finds out afterwards.

The CV still has to be local

Free movement removes the permit, not the conventions. A Spanish CV carries nationality and often a photograph; a Dutch one carries neither. A German Lebenslauf needs a complete chronology with no unexplained gaps. A French CV runs to one page early in a career. Page size is A4 everywhere in Europe, which matters more than it sounds if you have been working from a US template.

CV length by country and the French CV format cover the specifics. The language question is separate from the formatting one: applying in English to an English-language posting in Amsterdam still calls for a Dutch-format CV, and English-speaking jobs in Europe works through where those postings are and how to identify them.

Involve Resume does this from a single base document. You pick the destination country and the output takes that country's page size, length, personal details, section headings and date format, with localising, where the headings and dates move into the local language while your sentences stay untouched, kept separate from translating fully. Every change appears as a before and after diff with a reason attached, and the base is never overwritten. Browsing the board is free at the app.

A workable order of operations

1. Pick two or three destination countries, and check whether your profession is regulated in each.
2. If it is regulated, start the recognition application. It is the longest lead time on the list.
3. Request a U1 from your current social security institution, and a U2 if you are on unemployment benefit.
4. Get an ENIC-NARIC comparability statement if your qualification is unfamiliar in the destination.
5. Rebuild the CV to local conventions before you apply, not after the first rejection.
6. Ask both tax administrations about the year of the move once an offer is real.
7. Book the residence registration appointment as soon as you have an address, and check the waiting time in that specific city.

Sources

• Your Europe: residence rights for EU citizens
• Your Europe: recognition of professional qualifications
• Your Europe: social security forms
• Your Europe: taxes when working abroad
• EURES: the European job mobility portal
• ENIC-NARIC networks