Hi,
I am from Italy and since September 2024 I have been living and working in Flanders (not in Brussels). My voting rights, my family, and my general interests are still in Italy and I am an Italian citizen, but I have an official address in Belgium and pay taxes in Belgium. If I got a job at EU institutions, would I be entitled to the expat allowance? The rules seem a bit unclear on that - there is the 5 year rule, which states you are entitled to the allowance if you haven't resided and worked in Belgium for the previous 5 years, but I don't understand whether it means "at any time during the previous 5 years" or "for the entire 5 previous years". The allowance is around 500EUR so it would be a major factor in any decision. Thank you!
Hi, I don´t know how to
Hi, I don´t know how to answer your question precisely but you can try to find the answer in the EU jurisprudence, see for example https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=expatriation%2B...
The decision whether to grant or not to grant the expatriation allowance corresponds to the appointing authority (usually the PMO, but it depends where you´ll work) and it´s very important to provide as many documents as possible to prove your case. You will be asked to provide documents for the last ten years before your hiring.
When a case is very complicated the investigation is very thorough and it might take many months for a decision by the appointing authority to arrive. This means in practice that you cannot count on the expatriation allowance for many months. If granted, it will be paid in bulk many months after your hiring.
That´s all I know from experience, really.
I hope it helps.
M.