The process of moving to Europe is not consistently documented, and everyone seems to find a different path through the process. I thought it may be helpful to share some of my experiences so far.
If you are not a European citizen, then moving to Europe requires a VISA. It is possible to travel to Europe from most western countries for a period of 90 days within a 180 day period without a VISA, but these VISA’s offer quite limited social, work and residency terms. They also have almost no possibility of being extended, and are very strict on the requirements to only be in Europe for up to 90 days within any 180 day period. You cannot simply hop between European countries to avoid these limits, and you would actually have to leave Europe by going to a country such as the UK for 6 months before returning to the EU.
If you plan to actually live in Europe for more than 90 days, you need a VISA.
Getting a VISA for an EU country is not difficult, but it is time consuming, and does require a significant amount of preparation, and cost.
Depending on the country you apply to, you need to go through their embassy or consulate, you will need to present a lot of paperwork including such items as your birth certificate(s), marriage certificate, bank statements that show you have at least the minimum savings/income requirements for that country to ensure you are not going to be a burden on them , tax returns, possibly school and qualification certificates, and information on your dependents. You will also need a police background certification (in the USA this is done by either your local police or the FBI, and requires a fingerprint card to be created (a separate service offered by companies) and submitted and a fee paid, and can take weeks or months to be delivered, for me the FBI background check took a couple of weeks) and a medical form completed to show you are healthy and have no communicable diseases or STD’s, Greece has a specific form that the doctor must complete. And you will also need to show that you have adequate health insurance that meets the requirements of the county you are applying too.
Depending on the country you apply to you may also need some of these documents translated into the language of that country by a certified translation company, Greece didn’t require any translation. And you will need to book a time for an interview and pay a fee. And there is a specific form that must be completed for the interview.
Getting the interview can take some time, as depending on the season all time slots may be booked weeks or months in advance.
Once you have your VISA page added to your passport, it will have a “from” and a “to” date, and you will need to travel to your country of choice between those dates and get your passport stamped, and it will only be valid until the “to” date.
Once you arrive in Greece, you can then go through the local process for getting residency, which will require additional paperwork, generally requiring you to get registered for a tax ID, a bank account and have an address locally for which you have a rental or purchase contract.
Getting a bank account is also quite paperwork intensive. Most of this paperwork is due to the requirements of the Hague convention, which is designed to stop money laundering. But this means you have to prove things using an incredibly complex process. The process requires you to provide your passport (a photocopy works), a years worth of bank statements from your home country and a utility bill from your home in your home country, as well as a letter of recommendation from your bank. Of these documents the photos of passports, tax returns and utility bill need to be apostatized. These need to have been notarized (using a notary public in your home city), and these these notarized documents need to be certified by your local government (in the US this will be the secretary of state for your local state), and then these notarized and certified documents need to go through a further process and be apostatized. There are a number of companies that offer apostale services, and even though these are expensive, I’ve found them to be very worthwhile.
I’d suggest that before you go through the bank account process, visit the bank you are planning on one of your investigative trips, and speak to a representative and get their advice on exactly what documents they will require, get the business card of this rep, and ask if you can email them copies in advance to confirm these are exactly what they will require, then once they have confirmed these are what they need, invest in the process of getting them apostatized, as the cost using a service will be somewhere between 500 and 1000 euros depending on if you are a single person or a couple.
I’ve used a local lawyer to facilitate everything from getting a tax ID to opening a bank account, and this definitely helped.
I’d previously looked at France, Spain, Portugal and Greece, I found that Greece was actually the simplest process for me. The Greek consulate in New York was very friendly, easy to book and very helpful through the whole process. While some of the other countries outsourced their visa processes to a third party agency, who were not helpful and were clearly very overloaded.
