Long-term resident status in the EU

Third-country nationals migrate to the European Union for different reasons: economic migration, family reasons, studies, or in search of international protection. Some of these individuals stay in the territory of the Member States for a considerable number of years and develop attachments to the Member State. For this reason, integration of third-country nationals who are long-term residents in the Member States is considered as a key element in promoting economic and social cohesion in the European Union. One of the first pieces of EU legislation that was adopted dealing with immigration to the European Union was the Council Directive 2003/109/EC of 25 November 2003 concerning the status of third-country nationals who are long-term residents. While the Directive entered into force on 23 January 2006, the implementation of the Directive by Member States had not been uniform.

This is the reason why EMN Luxembourg decided, at the request of the Luxembourgish authorities, to launch a study on this topic through the European Migration Network. As it was necessary to make a proper assessment of the implementation of the Directive, it was decided by the EMN Steering Board on 21 October 2019 that EMN Luxembourg would collect information through the EMN Ad-Hoc Query mechanism to establish the set out a state of play of the implementation of the Directive. The information for elaborating this Inform was collected through four EMN Ad-hoc queries highlighting specific elements of the long-term resident status in the EU.