Non-resident EU citizen and non-EEA spouse

[mcru]

ok, here goes... I hold dual Irish and Australian citizenship. My wife is a citizen of Russia. We are waiting in 3rd countries until our Australian application is approved (currently in its 13th month, but that's another story...), prior to this time I was resident in Australia.

We have both been remote e-working from Georgia, UK, Turkey etc (where we got married last year -me for my Australian company and my wife for an American firm) and have actually not been residing in the EU other than a few weeks as tourists in the UK. We have just arrived in early December in the UK with my wife on a class c - family visit visa (valid until April).

We were hoping to go to Germany and a few other countries (e.g. Belgium, Estonia) for a road trip back to Russia in a few months time. But the embassies we've looked into (e.g. Germany) refuse to accept our application on my wifes current UK visa category here in London and/or say go to Russia to apply. My wife's work finished at the end of last year so we are free and financially ok to live for a fair while without work.

Any tips? We would be travelling together wherever we go.
As an alternative, should we be looking at staying longer in the UK and doing some type of residency or permit here in the UK to enable us to travel freer in the EU as a whole? I previously lived and worked in the UK for about 6 years a while ago so could easily claim to be resident here.

many thanks in advance...

[EUsmileWEallsmile]

The schengen states generally expect the visa applicant to apply in the country of residence (unless that would be disproportionate). There does not appear to be a derogation for spouses of EU nationals in the schengen code. That said, the directive 2004/38/EC mandates the granting of "every facility" to allow non-EU family members to obtain a visa.

http://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/polici ... 620_en.pdf

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/Lex ... 123:EN:PDF

I am curious as to why you did not ask the UK to issue your wife with a free EEA family permit visa, perhaps you did not realise that you could do this. Depending on your exact circumstances, it is possible that you have already achieved PR status in the UK.

[mcru]

We were flying in from different locations and were keen to get here for Christmas. The UK embassy did the visa for us quite quickly which was appreciated, plus to be honest the EEA Family Permit wasn't obvious when we started from scratch. We'll look in to the Permit.

Many thanks for your advice!

[mcru]

Just in case any visa required national finds themselves in this scenario, my wife is here on a Class C visitor visa (180 day multi entry).

I called UKBA - once our EEA2 application is submitted, the visitor visa is automatically extended until such time a decision on the EEA family permit is made.