UK Law regarding children born in the UK to EU Nationals before 02 October 2000
A recent High Court decision introduced a lot of potential confusion around the status of children born in the UK to EU nationals before 02 October 2000. Historically, children born to EU parents before 02 October 2000, have been treated as British. However, the Court decision brought this into question. This caused a lot of anxiety for adults who had lived all their lives believing themselves to British citizens only to find out that may not be the case.
The Home Office have taken a sensible approach in updating UK nationality laws in June 2023 to confirm that the children born in the UK to EU nationals, in this situation will be British. The change in law affects children born between 01 January 1983 and 02 October 2000 in the UK to an EU citizen parent. The British Nationality (Regulation of Past Practice) Act 2023 retrospectively confirms that children born in the UK during the aforementioned dates will be British citizens, providing their EU citizen parent was exercising freedom of movement in the UK at the time of the child’s birth.
As a result of the new law change, those exercising freedom of movement during this period were considered not to be subject to any immigration restrictions, and ‘settled’ for the purposes of their children born in the UK to automatically acquire British citizenship.
In order for an EU citizen to be considered as exercising free movement, and therefore an eligible parent, they would need to fit within one of the following categories in the UK (at the time of the child’s birth):
- Worker
- Business person/self-employed person
- Jobseeker
- Self-sufficient person (where the child was born after 30 June 1992)
- Student (where the child was born after 30 June 1992)
- Family member
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We would be happy to discuss this further before you consider applying for a British passport in this scenario.
We offer free consultations to discuss the legal requirements and your circumstances, so that we can assess if you are meeting the relevant requirements and consider if you have sufficient documents to support your potential application.