Misleading guidance re residency in Bulgaria

Hi and welcome to the Forum.

I've just read your post; in what way do you think you were mislead?  I've just checked the Sofia Embassy website and all the information on residency etc is there.  If there is something there that is misleading, you can contact the Foreign Office.  However, if the Bulgarian Government are now offering some special benefits to UK citizens that weren't known about prior to 1 Jan 2021, then I suspect your beef with them, not the UK.

Hope this helps.

Cynic
Expat Team

Hi, and thanks for the response.

I was looking at the UK Govt's website https://www.gov.uk/guidance/living-in-b … residency. This implied that you have to be legally resident at the time of the UK leaving the EU to benefit. Not that you simply have to have a residence permit but can be living in the UK.

I hadn't looked at the Sofa embassy's website https://www.gov.uk/world/organisations/ … assy-sofia before - you may be referring to a different site - but can't find anything that says UK citizens owning propety could (and should) apply for and easily get a residence permit for Bulgaria prior to 31 Dec 21.

Having the permit which gives you the option to reside in Bulgaria is different from being legally resident in Bulgaria at the point of the UK leaving the EU.

However when asking lawyers in Bulgaria about ways to stay in BG for longer than 90 days they all noted that I could have got a residency permit as I owned property. If you have seen something on a gov.uk website saying this can you let me know where please? The official UK Govt guidance that I checked regularly didn't mention it.

I have already sent a note to the FCDO.

Thanks,
David.

Hi again,

The UK Government negotiation is with the EU, not the Bulgarian Government; known as the "Withdrawal Agreement" it describes the basic rights (probably a poor word) that that had been agreed with the EU; there has been no direct negotiations between the UK and BG  I'm not aware of any other country in the world that offers non-residents residency permits, so I suspect that whatever it is, if it exists, then it's something the Bulgarians have decided on their own largesse.

The link I referred to is the same as yours; there is nothing reciprocal for BG citizens who live in Bulgaria and own property in the UK, so I'm suspicious.

My advice would be to contact the Foreign Office and ask if they can provided any information on these new rights you have discovered.

Hope this helps.

Cynic
Expat Team

Hi Cynic,

I may not have explained the situation clearly enough.

These are not new rights, they are old rights that expired on the Brexit transition. Last year, as a owner of property in BG, I could have applied for and been given a residence permit. It would have taken a few days and cost less than BGN 20. See https://www.mvr.bg/en/about-the-ministr … ut-brexit. In 2021 those rights would allow me to spend as much time in BG as I wanted.

The UK Govt's website pages on Bulgaria didn't make any reference to this - so I was unaware of it until now. It just talked about Brexit risks in terms of whether you were legally resident in Bulgaria or not. Had the Govt made property owners like me aware of it, I would have applied for the residency permit. I would then have to right to travel to BG and stay there beyond the post-transition 90 day limit.

Yes, Brexit was a UK-EU thing. But I was not looking at a EU page on gov.uk, I was looking at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/living-in-bulgaria, which I expected to provide guidance on the impact of Brexit and steps to take to address this. One such step being - as a property owner - to apply for a residence permit. Which is very different from being legally resident.

The effect of the Brexit transition means that as an ex-eu citizen I cannot apply for the long term residence permit as before. I would first need to apply for a D-visa, then a residency permit, which lasts for just a year, and would cost BGN 000's. My question is why didn't the UK Govt hightlight this?

My opinion - it's not their job to tell you about your residency rights in Bulgaria, these were rights that pre-dated Brexit, maybe even 2007 when Bulgaria joined the EU and not reciprocal.

Hi Cynic,

It may not be the Govt's role to tell people about existing rights. But I would expect the Govt to have a responsibility to highlight a major change to these rights as a direct result of Brexit - which is exactly the situation.

The UK Govt has explained many other impacts of Brexit on their Bulgaria pages - but somehow omitted to highlight changes in this area.

I suspect this will impact many people who own property in BG but hadn't applied for residency as it wasn't significant prior to the transition and they weren't aware of the impact from Brexit to these rights - how could they be if the Govt didn't tell them?

The number of people affected (many thousands of property owners) is likely to be much larger than the number of people emigrating from the UK to BG as a result of Bexit.

Cheers,
David.

As I said, it's my opinion based on years of dealing with these people, not something I know for a fact.  When you find out, I'd be grateful if you would post the result on here so that others are better informed; perhaps a class action approach to the Foreign Office by all of you affected by this may produce something better than you have now.