Travelling with non-EEA partner while EEA4 is processing

[Ajudante]

I am a EEA (Portuguese) national and my civil partner is a non-EEA national. He applied for a EEA4 some months ago. In the meanwhile he had to travel to his country so he asked the UKBA to return his passport, which they did. They have not asked it back. My partner is now back in the UK but his current permit (EEA2) has expired.

We now need to travel to Portugal together, which seems problematic as he does not have a valid permit either to enter Portugal or to reenter the UK. In the letter we got from the UKBA when they returned the passport they talk about asking for a reentry permit from any UK consulate abroad. I think we can do that in Portugal.

The question is, will the Portuguese embassy issue a Schengen visa? Is it worth trying or do we have to cancel the whole trip? On top of that, asking for a visa may not even be feasible, as from previous experience with the Portuguese embassy, the waiting time to get an appointment is several weeks and we need to travel soon. Arriving in Portugal without a visa would theoretically be OK if he had a valid UK residence permit (we did this in other countries without problems), but as his UK residence permit has expired, can we still travel and return?

There is some info about this on the website below. The site has links to accounts of couple who had the same problem and decided to travel without a visa. For most of them it was OK, but there is also a case of a woman being detained and held for 3 days when entering Ireland, even though she was a family member of a EEA national

http://eumovement.wordpress.com/2010/08 ... to-travel/

On a separate note, does anyone know what is the real website of the Portuguese embassy/consulate in London?? I get many results in Google but it seems they are all fakes, mostly travel agencies and visa agencies trying to pass as the real thing..

[Plum70]

Is your CP a non-visa national? If so then they should have no problem travelling to and from the UK (with you) w/out a PR document or an EEA family permit on re-entry to the UK.

I never managed to find the legitimate website for the Portuguese embassy in London whenever I searched.

If you know where the embassy is located (if you visited them to register your presence in London/the UK) then it may be worth physically going there to make enquiries.

[Ajudante]

Thanks, Plum70. My CP is a visa-national, that's the whole problem. We are not sure if he can enter Portugal (as in the visa application they explicitly ask for a UK residence permit number) and then reenter the UK (as the residence permit is now expired)

[EUsmileWEallsmile]

Portuguese embassy should issue a shengen visa, the UK is the applicant's place of residence (I am not saying that you will not have problems, but you won't know until you try).

The UK will expect the applicant to hold a family permit if the residence card has expired.