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Absolutely, right now it's often incredibly difficult to establish residence in another EU country. If you move to Sweden, for example, it can take over half a year [1] before you can access government services, banking, healthcare, or even much of online shopping.

[1] https://www.thelocal.se/20210510/my-first-visit-to-the-swedi...



I'm Swedish living in Sweden, but lived most of my life in the US. I too had many issues with this sort of thing. Frankly it's a national embarrassment. At the very least I think that Skatteverket shouldn't be allowed to assess any taxes from someone that hasn't been assigned a personnummer. Not even retroactively. Maybe then they'll have at least a little incentive to do their job.

But really this just makes me sad that cash is going away. It provided some ways to work around the system, but with so few people accepting it, you're just kind of the mercy of the bureaucracy. And good luck ever convincing common Swedes it's an issue when they've always lived in the system. They only see it as something that works so well, when it is basically broken for all newcomers.


Really? I moved from the Netherlands to Romania a few years ago and all I had to do was register for residency at the immigration services. That took about 15 minutes. I opened a bank account the same day. Healthcare was also easy once I was employed.


You can survive, but most online services depend on the availability of a fiscal number, which sometimes takes ages to come especially if you are not employed. Once you're in the system everything becomes smoother. An EU-wide system would be absolutely great for those coming to live here from other EU countries.




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