Procedures for gaining residency

Yellow slip is no longer available to Brits. (Except Irish nationals).  it's now pink slip renewable each year for 5 years then you can apply for permanent residency and with this working is  not allowed.... Cat F for retirees is available but still disallows working... You can of course opt for permanent residency fast tracked with a property purchase in excess of €300k.plus vat  ...  You will need  X rays blood tests for HIV TB HEP A HEP B  Police conduct checks, all documents apostilled, €10-20k deposited into a Cyprus bank account proof of source of funds proof of stable income to support you. Passports birth marriage and divorce certs if applicable , residency application form each plus the fee each. Proof of local address either rental contract or house purchase utility bills in your name....

All of what Toon mentioned and I would recommend you engage a local company to help as getting an immigration appointment is near impossible unless you go thru a local agent. You should also get all the docs you require prepared and apostle in the UK before leaving as it is much easier if you have it all with you.

You will need a Cypriot bank account and deposit a substantial amount as Toon mentioned for an for the duration. Current wait times for an appointment is 2-4 weeks. A local agent might get you in earlier but you need a face to face appointment to open the account. No internet account opening lol. Things work best if you go in person for everything you need. If you are a couple and not married you need to prove co-habitation for at least a year before arrival. Your local council will provide a certificate for being on the electoral role. If you are bringing any vehicles over 5 years old there are is more red tape. Bear in mind that the process of everything in Cyprus takes much much longer than you expect and will take some twists along the way. Not trying to put you off but just setting expectations. I am going thru this and unfortunately the rules changed on the 1st Jan by introducing a lot more requirements and I arrived on the 4th Dec so got caught out! If you have sold your UK house they like proof as they need to know you are transferring residency to Cyprus. If you are buying you will need to visit the estate agents and as a non EU person you will need to gain permission to purchase from the authorities. If renting make sure the rental agreement has stamp duty paid if over 5k euro and to get this the owner must have a Cypriot tax ID. HMRC will need to be sorted out but only after you get the pink slip. That will be the easy part. When you have a place to live there will be some documents that need to be signed by the local Mukhtar at the council office normally. I think I have covered most of the gotchas. Feel free to any questions.

What Phil said and take copies of everything... Definitely highly recommend an agent as it takes a lot of stress and anxiety out of the process ......

Best advice I can give you as regards relocating 

1...it's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

2...Manage your expectations

3...Have an exit plan should life here not be what you thought or expected

4...Rent first for at least 6-12 months.. find your feet explore  the areas that you fancy visit mornings noon and nights  as the dynamics change and can change rapidly

5...planning planning planning

6...don't be afraid to ask for anything.  The more information you have the better then sift through  the various comments opinions etc do the research, consider everything ignore nothing

I will add to Phil and Toon's post - be patient and manage your own expectations.

Thanks for your info all, ive had property since 2005 but with this 90/180 rule i was wanting to stay longer than 90 days so was looking at this yellow slip which now is pink slip ive heard appointment take awhile and you need a separate insurance i believe

Yes you need  healthcare cover to satisfy immigration dept .. there is a cheap one ..under €200 each per yr ... It is a requirement that this is maintained throughout your residency as your residency can and will be terminated... Each year the pink slip is renewed you will be required to prove the funds and healthcare cover exists and is valid.

I’m going through this at the moment, I have a house in Paphos and splitting my time between the UK a& Cyprus.

i an eligible for residency due to the value of the house but I’m not sure what the benefits are?

Longer than 90 day lengths of stay being the immediate benefit the other being able to easier access Schengen zone

Sadly it looks increasingly as if they only really want to grant residency to relatively wealthy individuals - which is quite sad really...

Jim

@shotokan101 all geared to money Jim

@shotokan101 all geared to money Jim
-@Toon

Yes indeed

Jim

Cash is king ..   everything is getting expensive houses up by 1-3%, apartments up by 10%, rents up to ridiculous levels, electricity getting silly but thanks to subsidies over winter it was manageable,  groceries gone crazy but no shortage so I guess we should be thankful for that

TEMPORARY RESIDENCY MADE HARDER FOR EXPATS

From January 1, 2023, requirements changed

In addition to the documents required to date, such as proof of a residence in Cyprus

(rented or owned) and private health insurance, new requirements have been added, and

applicants are required to produce the following:

1. Original Clear Criminal Record Certificate from the country of origin orr esidence, if the applicant resides in a country other than the country of origin, with a duly certified official translation in Greek or English

2. Original medical examination certificate of blood tests proving that the third country national does not suffer from hepatitis B and C, HIV, syphilis, and a chest X-ray for tuberculosis with a doctor’s opinion, stamped by a specialist doctor from the Republic of Cyprus

3. Original letter of guarantee from a banking institution in the Republic of Cyprus, with a duration of ten (10) years, to cover possible repatriation expenses in the applicant’s name from their bank account. The amount depends

on the country of origin. To the end of Dec 2022, this was not required to be provided by UK

Nationals

4. Evidence that the applicant has sufficient and stable resources derived from a stable or satisfactory income of the applicant outside the Republic. Income includes salary, pension, deposits in a bank account abroad, rents, dividends, interest on deposits or by exception from dividends from a company in the Republic (with certification by the Company’s Accountant, they do not receive any salary from hisp position) or rents in the Republic, or from income in the bank account in the Republic from a salary from previous work in a company of foreign interests.

1. Detailed statements of bank account transactions in a financial institution in

the Republic of Cyprus need to be provided from the date of opening the bank account in the case of a first permit, showing the foreign remittances in the name of the applicant, which in total should be not less than €2,000 per month or €24,000

per year for one person. This amount increases by 20% for the spouse and 15% for each child. For the purposes of calculating the amount, transfers abroad or to third parties will not be considered.

2. A cash transfer or deposit of at least €10,000 is also accepted during the first permit. The cash declaration at customs must be submitted in case of a cash deposit.

When applying for the renewal of the visitor’s permit, the balance in the account must, in any case, must not be less than €6,000, which corresponds to three months’ income,

regardless of the size of the family. For purposes of calculating sufficient funds, the bank statement will be accompanied by the following

(a) a declaration of the number of family members that the sponsor will support in the Republic

(b) a summarised statement of income.

There is some vagueness in the new requirements, and no doubt those issues will be raised in due course and may well lead to further rounds of changes in the future .... I did hear through the grapevine that a further set of changes may be on the cards in May 2023.. Let's hope they are more reasonable

It's clear that CyGovs policy is to raise the bar on who will be allowed to reside in Cyprus on a temporary residence permit....

Just to add

1. ACRO certs must have apostle. Best get this before leaving the UK to keep cost down.
2. X-Ray and blood test even if you have a letter from the issuing hospital you still need the form from immigration certifying negative results signed by a Cypriot doctor. The form is available in advanced of getting the X-Ray and blood tests so take it with you and see if they will sign it as it cost me 40.00 euro to get it signed by my local doctor.
3. I did not need this but watch this space lol
4. After depositing the 40,000 EUR in the Cypriot bank I also had to pay for a printed statement showing the balance at the bank 5.00 euro that was stamped and signed by the bank branch manager.
5. 
   

@phildraper thanks... great info

Just been told there are new rules for making appointments for residency with effect from 23rd of May 2023... I wil attach them when I get them

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OJ_IKk … p=drivesdk

@Toon

thanks Toon for these valuable info,

will these conditions also apply to me since my wife is European and we own a property in Paphos. our plan is to spent our time b/w UAE and Paphos.

thanks in advance

Tarek   

@Toon Just happened to look at migration dept website and they have an announcement that they will no longer be using the appointment arrangement as of March 20,2023, walk in to begin then. I am not smart enough to copy the page and was too

surprised to figure out how to do. It ids under announcements in the migration section 

Any appointments after the 19th will be cancelled

I have read this damn thing several times and I think this applies to all districts and not just Nicosia.

I hope they clarify things. They did give email addresses to two individuals. 

Looks likes it all changed again...   

http://www.moi.gov.cy/moi/CRMD/crmd.nsf … enDocument

Pew glad I just got in and obtained my yellow slip 2 weeks ago :-)

Looks to me like theyve rejigged it as the specific entities appears to refer to the agents and legal bods who snaffle all the appointments and assuch individuals not using agents etc can't get appointments.... So it's back to walk-ins and taking your chances

@phildraper lucky indeed ..  back to the black hole of Calcutta that is known as the immigration dept

Getting an appointment with immigration is no longer done on-line you need to ring up. This is a recent change. I understand appointments are now available around June/July.

Am looking at the MFA website and the announcement .. it seems to refer specifically to NICOSIA... And the link at the very bottom looks at a schedule with allocated appointments for certain companies and immigration assistants with only one application point (4) per time slot for walk ins

Is this a sign of things to come for other districts

@Socialist A if your wife is European she can apply for residency as an EU national and you would apply with her as a family member of an EU national.. so much easier than non EU national...

The route you take will depend  on your own personal circumstances but the one thing that seems to be constant is it takes a long time to complete 

What does immigration permits A-F and Reg 6.2 mean?

A-E were the old visa classifications refering to work types and fields of work including self employed F was self sufficient such as retirees .. not yet worked out or found what 6.2 refers to..

Can we now go to the Immigration service of the Police  as stated in the above the appointment schedule?

Best bet is to contact those email.addesses and see what response you get..a friend of mine who knew and temporarily covering some of the workload of the late Melanie Ballard is to investigate Monday and will let me know

The Immigration Permit, under Regulation 6(2) of the Aliens and Immigration Regulations, allows non-Cypriot, non-EU nationals to enter and stay as permanent residents in Cyprus with no limitations, provided that they fulfil the financial and quality criteria set.

Looks like it's all about the money .and a money making machine being forced on many ...the lucky ones will have the walkins and save a fortune

I would like to be a fly on the wall at the immigration office in Paphos.  What a zoo it will be, poor Maria

It's not the most pleasant of experiences thats for sure .... For anyone ...

I can't believe the organisational differences between the Immigration Dept and Citizen Service Centre in Paphos district..

CSC is just superbly well organised.. Immigration Dept is an absolute shambles

So we can now arrange an appointment thru the immigration unit of the police?

- Immigration Permits (A-F)

- Immigration Permits Reg.6.2

- Long-term residents

All appointments arranged through the online platform until May 19, 2023 remain valid. To arrange new appointments or changes to existing appointments, the public is invited to send emails as follows: (a) For Immigration Permits A – F: mageorgiou@crmd.moi.gov.cy (b) For Immigration Permits Reg.6.2: aevangelou @crmd.moi.gov.cy and hdamianou@crmd.moi.gov.cy (c) For long-term residents: mageorgiou@crmd.moi.gov.cy

In the news this morning

Civil Registry scraps online portal for making appointments after reports of shady agents selling slots for €200

The civil registry and migration department’s online appointment system was scrapped this week after allegations of rampant exploitation and abuse of the programme.

For almost two years thousands of tax paying citizens faced immense stress as they tried booking appointments, unaware that the slots were being mass booked by shady “agents” instead.

When a person went to the department’s webpage they would see no slots available for about three months ahead. A slot would ‘magically’ appear for just a day or two ahead when they paid an “agent” between €100 to €200 to book an appointment under the online system.

A government spokesperson confirmed to the Cyprus Mail that abuse of the system by “certain interests” means that most appointments from March 20 and May 19, depending on your category, onwards are no longer valid from the previous booking portal.

The Cyprus Mail was contacted by three concerned members of the public who said that they eventually caved in and had to pay “agents”.

“It’s completely wrong to have to pay the government to see the government, I had to pay [a fixer] €200 to get an appointment,” Walker Rowe, a US national living in Cyprus for almost four years, told us.

“This causes real problems for real people. Because suddenly after following the rules, when you can’t get an appointment, you wonder if you can travel out of the country. Your paper is expired. Will they then let you back in? Maybe you can’t go to a wedding or funeral? This is a genuine problem,” he explained.

Those concerns were confirmed by another long-time Cyprus resident, an Australian living for 30 years on the island, who found himself unwillingly classified as illegal.

Repeated attempts to renew his documents were blocked by the misuse of the system.

“I was concerned that I was about to become illegal and the potential implications of that,” he explained.

“For example, if I have to fly to Australia for any reason, they wouldn’t let me depart again without proof of residency in Cyprus as my return destination. They will not be convinced by an email confirming an appointment with the immigration service, two months after it expired. I can’t really risk flying anywhere and feel that I am imprisoned here until my now overdue application can be accepted,” he said.

A third person, a man in his 50s who has lived and worked in Cyprus for 21 years, contacted the Cyprus Mail and backed up the claims.

“Unfortunately I had to pay, and the very next day I had an appointment – I went in and everything was solved,” he said.

He explained that had he gone the official route it would have taken at least three months.

“I don’t want to use this word but it looks like it’s corrupt, it’s abused – somehow – by different parties, and the only loser is the poor people out there waiting in line,” he explained.

“There are so many poor people being shouted at from the entrance, they are being treated very badly,” he said.

“Let’s say a third-country national working as a housekeeper, her salary is what €400? She’s having to pay €150 just to get an appointment at a government office, along with the bad treatment outside the office where they have been waiting for days,” he emphasised.

feature nickThe online appointment system was launched in June 2021 and was supposed to streamline the process – reducing the number of people randomly turning up to be seen, turning the migration department offices into a rugby scrum.

But what emerged instead was a shady network of “agents” that would seemingly mass book the appointments. They would then wait to sell these appointments, whereby they cancelled them and quickly rebooked them in the customer’s name.

A government spokesperson confirmed to the Cyprus Mail that the online booking system was scrapped this week due to abuse and misuse by “certain interests”.

The interior ministry source reasoned that the booking system had worked and continues to do so at other state services, but admitted that the migration department’s appointments were abused.

Questions remain, however.

We were told that “we will evaluate the new system and whether it achieves our goals, if not we’ll have to see what else we can do – if we do use another online booking system then we’ll have to greatly increase the safeguards.”

The 50-year-old who has lived and worked in Cyprus for over 20 years explained the stress he faced when simply trying to book a slot – and then the moral conflict when he did pay a fixer to get the appointment.

His wife was due to give birth in a few months’ time and therefore he wanted to get the paperwork sorted for his mother to be able to come over, see and help with the baby.

“Eventually I just paid, I hated that I became part of what was wrong with the system but I just had to,” he told me.

Both he and his wife have Cypriot IDs, but the mother is a third-country national.

He said that incomplete or unclear instructions on the website meant that he had to wait three months to find out in-person what papers he needed. He was fearful that he may be told during his eventual appointment that the lack of a certain piece of paper – or stamp, and such – may have led to another three-month delay.

He explained that he began the process in December and that had he done everything along the official route then an appointment would not have been available by the time I met him, in early March.

He said that he was told three different versions of how the racket worked. The first being that all the appointments are booked up by “agents” who then hand them out for commission.

Others said that they knew “insider” officials who could fix the appointments, while others claimed that they simply knew the odd times at which appointments slots became available for booking – early in the morning or late at night – and therefore charged for the booking process.

But the experience at the migration department was not equal for everyone, it appears.

A Cypriot woman in her late 20s explained how she would get seen without appointments.

“Like with other offices in Cyprus I just went there and made a fuss until they let me in, I’d say: ‘I came all this way and now you’re going to turn me away and make me come back in three months with an appointment?’ and they would then let me in,” she said.

That seems to be along the lines as to how the system worked prior to the online booking programme, launched after the covid pandemic.

Those who contacted the Cyprus Mail bemoaned the chaotic scenes in years past, with dozens of people bundling into the offices; waiting to be seen.

But, they said, at least they would be seen on that day; eventually.

“If you were lucky you could get an appointment in an hour, perhaps during your lunchbreak from work, if you were unlucky maybe three or four hours, but the job could be done on that day,” the 50-year-old told me.

After the interior ministry scrapped the booking portal this week, the new system appears to be a stopgap. Depending on your category you can either phone, email or – in a return to the past – just show up.

It was not immediately clear to how long the notification period takes where the appointment is booked by email. And whether anyone will answer the phone remains to be seen. Good luck!

Source https://cyprus-mail.com/2023/03/19/gove … epartment/