Moving Abroad Objectives & Goals

Enabled by the fundamental free movement of persons granted by EU treaties, the Life event of “Moving Abroad” is an exciting opportunity that European citizens are increasingly engaging with according to estimates of 2017, 12 million European citizens were working abroad.

However, moving can also be time-consuming and stressful, especially when moving to a new country. The administrative burden stems from multiple processes especially when they require in-person and/or document-based interactions (and when those processes are only available in one language): looking up country-specific requirements for registration, make copies of important documents, etc. The European citizen acts often as a middleman for the exchange of physical documents (for which in addition certified translations are required).

To make this operation as smooth and straightforward as possible for the citizen and cost-effective for authorities collaborating to facilitate citizens’ mobility, a secure value chain enabling the trustworthy exchange of necessary evidentiary data between the authentic sources of information and the European public services involved is a great benefit.

This will allow numerous benefits: higher quality of the cross-border services by securely delivered, trustworthy and up-to-date information, more efficient workflows available to authorities to interact with the information chains, less need to spend time and resources investigating the validity of the documents, etc.

The process of moving abroad to a new destination typically takes about three to six months. Having a holistic approach through e-Services will help speed up the process, minimize surprises and allow a rapid transition to the destination country.

The Moving Abroad pilot’s main objective is to lower barriers (paper-based processes, language challenges etc.) for citizens wanting to move abroad.