HELP!!! - can we leave the uk?????

[PAVA10]

Hi,

I am a citizen of Ireland and my wife is Peruvian. We both live and work in the UK and my wife holds her EEA2 UK Residence Card.

Whilst gaining an EEA family permit (and subsequently a 5 year residence card) did NOT require our peruvian marriage certificate to be legalised by the peruvian foreign office we have recently discovered that the application to gain a schengen visa DOES require the peruvian marriage certificate to be legalised. Having spoken to the Peruvian consulate I am informed that legalisation of the certifiate needs to be carried out in Lima and that my wife needs to be present to do this.

In other words my wife is unable to leave the UK and travel to Europe without first returning to Peru. This is very disappointing as we have waited for more than 6 months to obtain the residence card only to discover that we STILL cannot travel in the immediate future.

Questions: Is my interpretation above correct? Does anybody know if it
is possible to obtain a schengen visa for an EEA family
member WITHOUT having to legalise a non EEA marriage
certificate?

What about travelling to Ireland? Does my wife need a VISA
for that if she holds a UK residence card? (Ireland is not in the
Shengen area and so a Shengen visa is not required)

Thanks in advance

[thsths]

Whilst gaining an EEA family permit (and subsequently a 5 year residence card) did NOT require our peruvian marriage certificate to be legalised by the peruvian foreign office we have recently discovered that the application to gain a schengen visa DOES require the peruvian marriage certificate to be legalised. Having spoken to the Peruvian consulate I am informed that legalisation of the certifiate needs to be carried out in Lima and that my wife needs to be present to do this.

To be honest, this is more a problem with Lima than with the EU. The legalisation of marriage certificates is quite standard, and there is no reason why this should be a difficult process.

Still, it may be worth checking with different European countries. In theory the process should be the same everywhere, but there are certainly slight differences in how they are handled. Also some countries accept her UK residence card as a valid visa.

Tom