That would be difficult, I guess. You need your passport to cross any border, and you need the residence card to demonstrate the European right of free movement. There is a clause that you can travel without a passport in emergencies, but that only applies to European citizens, as far as I know.

So you have to urge the UKBA to send your passport immediately.

 

To travel abroad you will need your passport, which you can recall from the UK Border Agency (UKBA). Please also bear in mind that in order to get a Schengen Visa, you also need to have a minimum of 6 months residency left. If you don't get your residency permit renewed, you won't get the visa.

My EEA4 application was sent on 22nd September (still unprocessed). As I asked for the return of my wife passport for Christmas (hoping that UKBA would look at our file and issue the residency permit), we received the passport without the residency stamp together with the following letter:

"Your documents are being returned to enable you to travel.

Family members of an EEA national, who are not themselves EEA nationals, wishing to return to United Kingdom should apply for an EEA family permit at a British diplomatic post abroad before returning to this country. An EEA family permit is issued free of charge and on priority basis."

Basically this means that the non EEA partner will be able to go abroad using his passport, but he has no guarantee to be able to go back. How long will it take for the British Diplomatic Post abroad to issue the family permit? Since UKBA holds our official paperwork, why don't they issue this permit to allow non-EEA spouse to come back?

In our case, we returned the passport straight away. UKBA is in possession of all of our legal papers including marriage certificate and financial papers (which they kept) and given the time taken to process our application, I was concerned that my wife would not be able to return at all. It was not worth the risk to be separated for a long period.

We were told by UKBA that you can only send your application one month prior to the renewal of the residency permit, in our case 25th October. Since February my wife has not been able to travel with me and visit my family in the Schengen zone, because the consulate requires 6 months residency left on the passport to issue a visa. Since September she is blocked in the UK. We have no idea when our file will be processed. We are simply STUCKED.

I have seen many complaints about the 6 months processing delay and truly believe that it is simply due to the government not putting enough resources to respond to the demand. Our case is very straightforward, we are married, living together, and we are both employed, making a nice living. I do not understand why our application has not been processed after 4 month. To make the matter worse we did not hear anything over the whole period, and were told not to contact UKBA.

If you want to force the government to do something about the processing delay of EEA applications, feel free to sign the petition that I created on the Prime Minister website:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/EEA4-Residency/

Good luck. Eric

 

That's certainly nice but the delays affect all applications under EU law not just EEA4. A petition which covers the issue more broadly has been initiated earlier, see http://www.easyexpat.com/forums/ftopic_16710.htm.