Anyones spouse got an Irish passport?

It is, and with Border Force it seemed to dramatically increase when they changed their uniform a decade or more ago to the black shirts.

Yes I can see some ‘interesting’ interactions at uk passport control for some in the future. Personally I travel only with my Irish passport now but do also carry my French residency card.

I think we must be as I am not sure what you are talking about.

When he's wandering around the house moaning or whining I call him Thunder Baby.

Wait ... how did we get here from the thread title?
As you were.
I told the wife last night that I thought Id discovered I could now travel all around Europe with them for as long as we (I say we, I mean I) wanted.
She was truly overjoyed I tell you. And then kindly asked that I make myself useful and take the bins out and help the kids with their homework instead of pouncing around on the tinternet.
The dream didnt last long. Virtual campervan cancelled.

I think the long waits are for people applying with more didtant Irish residents eg Grandparents, which means moire paperwork.

AIUI, my wifes application should take around 20 days (plus posting docs etc), as it was her father who was born in Ireland.

You must have applied around the same time as me.

Passport would have been really quick but delayed thanks to UK postal strikes

Dublin didn't want to send my passport to me until the strikes were over.

Also the passport application took nearly 3 weeks to get to Dublin, despite expensive tracked, signed for post due to a problem with sending anything abroad from the UK.

Another Brexit thing. Ironic huh

This thread is hugely interesting. Thanks to the contributors so far.

I wonder if someone could help me with the below queries, explaining them in extremely plain English, or perhaps using crayons to draw me a simple answer, because this stuff seems very complex.

I am British with British Passport. My wife is EU born with EU passport and also British citizenship and British passport. Married since 2016. Live in UK. Our young son has both EU and British citizenship and passports.

My queries are:

1) Can the 90 days in 180 day period be explained in a simplified fashion please? What does this mean for me as the husband of an EU citizen with an EU child? How does my situation differ from other British travellers to the EU with no EU spouse?

2) Can I legitimately walk down the 'EU' passport queue when travelling to the EU with my wife and child?

3) Do I have any other 'EU' advantages due to my marriage situation that I may not be aware of?

Ideally I would like to eventually obtain EU country residency or citizenship, but I appreciate this may be very complex and difficult, and is certainly something that won't be happening anytime soon. For now, if there are any benefits, however minor, I might as well use them.

Thank you in advance.

I have a British Passport and Portuguese Citizenship; really easy to get albeit I did get Residency before Brexit. All I did was fill a form in and pay €15.

I also have South African Citizenship which hasn’t offered any value since I left living there until this year when I booked a luxury Safari for next month and got local Citizen discounts applied. Something to do with Covid where they needed to get locals into the 5* lodges that typically target £ and $ customers. The scheme is still ongoing. So….hot tip for any Saffas thinking of visiting home.

My Partner has dual Slovakian/Italian passports and UK residency so we’re covered because we plan to divide our time to living in 3 countries.

For a British citizen now the UK is no longer a member of the EU then visiting the Schengen area now means they cannot spend more than 90 days in a rolling 180 days unless they apply for a visa to stay longer.

The killer isn't the 90 days, but the rolling 180 days. So for example, you can't go to Spain for 90 days then pop back to the UK for one day then go back to Spain again for another 90 days, because your 90 day allocation has been used and you can't return until the first of those 90 days has fallen off the rolling 180 days which it will in another three months time. So go to Spain for November, December, and January, and then you cannot go anywhere in the Schengen area until May.

For most people this makes little difference, but for those with second homes in France or want to spend the whole winter in Spain or Portugal it makes things difficult.

It means that whenever you travel with your wife in the Schengen area that none of that time counts against *your* 90 day allowance - your wife has no allowance because she has no limit to the amount of time she can spend there, subject to the requirement to register for residency if she spends more than a continuous three months in one country.

That means if you wanted to spend November, December, and January in Portugal and then February and March in Span with your wife then you could, something that someone British without an EU spouse could not do.

Yes. You can't when you are travelling on your own, but with either your wife or your child you can.

Not really. A minor advantage is that when ETIAS is introduced then as a spouse of an EU citizen you won't have to pay the €7 fee, but other than that, not a lot.

Obtaining residency as a family member of an EU citizen should be easier and cheaper than if you were not in order for the EU to comply with its rules on freedom of movement and the respect for family and private life - if they made it difficult then they are not respecting your wife's right to the freedom of movement within the EU and are not respecting your wife's family and private life.

In summary being the spouse of an EU citizen means -

1. No longer having to queue in the long 'you Britishers, over there' queue
2. Not having to concern yourself with the length of time you spend as a couple in the EU, so long winter holidays in retirement
3. Easier residency if you chose to move there permenantly

For your child, they obviously have those freedom of movement rights now, and when in the future they marry their spouse will have the rights that you have, and if those rights are important then they might want to investigate whether that citizenship can be inherited by any children they have.

To add the chapter and verse on being able to go into the EU passport queue with your EU spouse, it is set out in EU Regulation 2016/399 -

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTM...

The relevant parts quoted with my bolding -

(16) In order to reduce the waiting times of persons enjoying the Union right of free movement, separate lanes, indicated by uniform signs in all Member States, should, where circumstances allow, be provided at border crossing points. Separate lanes should be provided in international airports. Where it is deemed appropriate and if local circumstances so allow, Member States should consider installing separate lanes at sea and land border crossing points.

Art 2 Definitions

5. ‘persons enjoying the right of free movement under Union law’ means:
(a) Union citizens within the meaning of Article 20(1) TFEU, and third-country nationals who are members of the family of a Union citizen exercising his or her right to free movement to whom Directive 2004/38/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council (21) applies;