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Anti N-reg provisions - EASA FCL and post-brexit UK FCL

zuutroy wrote:

Interesting! My assertion is based on nothing but a hunch. Myself and 2 other IR guys could only come up with about 10 planes when we put our heads together. Where are they all hiding?!

:) In the UK?

EGTR

I am told that there is a large number of private pilots, and a much larger number of commercial pilots, who did a SOLI to Ireland, and the private ones who fly N-regs, and whose base country has not derogated, are now screwed to have to do the seven exams.

So it isn’t just pilots physically based in Ireland.

One Q is how many of these are based in the UK – these can’t meet the ANO requirement for dual papers because an Irish/EASA IR doesn’t count! They have to get a UK IR. Well, the official deadline for EASA IR recognition for this purpose, AIUI, is 31 Dec 2022.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

From here

aquila wrote:

I know that the concept of residency can lead to many interpretations and that my status could become an issue.

In the end it is pretty simple:
If you only spend a couple of weeks per year within the EU and while here you stay in a hotel then no judge will assume that you are a resident.
If you spend a significant time of the year in the EU and live in an owned or permanently rented home, every judge will assume you are resident.

If we take the regulation as what it was meant for and not try to find loopholes in individual words, 95% of cases are pretty clear (not implying that you might not be one of the 5%).

I know some people that spend so much time searching for loopholes that they could actually save time, money and hassle by just getting their European papers…

Germany

In the end it is pretty simple:
If you only spend a couple of weeks per year within the EU and while here you stay in a hotel then no judge will assume that you are a resident.
If you spend a significant time of the year in the EU and live in an owned or permanently rented home, every judge will assume you are resident.

That’s a personal (I would argue “wishful thinking”) view, from a “maximum compliance” perspective. Residence is a complex matter. For example, lots of rich people have houses all over the world and avoid paying tax (which is just one “residence” issue) in most or all of them. Even tax residency laws (where arguably “residency” or “domicile” are the most well established concepts) are nowhere near as strict as the above quote – especially after an initial period.

And in any country with a functioning justice system (by no means all of Europe, even just N Europe ) any ambiguity is construed in favour of the defendant.

There are good reasons why this stuff has not been legally tested, despite being in place for > 10 years. EASA has also refused to clarify ambiguities when asked to do so e.g. the one about whether a derogation applies only to the “base country” or to every country overflown(the latter would make the whole scheme worthless).

We did all this over and over in the main thread but that one is 800+ posts.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

It is true that the best way to avoid European over regulation is to physically leave Europe, as so many people have done over the centuries.

Peter wrote:

hat’s a personal (I would argue “wishful thinking”) view, from a “maximum compliance” perspective.

My point was a different one – and I’m trying illustrate this with a flying analogy (knowing that this can be a hornet’s nest as well):

If you fly 10ft below a restricted airspace you need to consider a lot of things like altimeter accuracy, resolution of GPS, air pressure values and accuracy, acceptable transgression limits, etc. and you could get the impression that all regulations are utterly complicated and ask if that makes sense. And yes: Sometimes there is no good alternative to that.
In the vast majority of cases, however, the simple solution is staying away from the airspace by a margin and all of these fine prints of regulations simply do not matter at all and life is easy.

Same with licensing question: For the vast majority of people here the most simple solution is just do what the regulator wants and get the European papers. Yes, there are difficult cases (e.g. is it really worth the effort if I only spend 3 months a year in Europe and the rest of the year in the US), but those are quite limited.

Germany

For the vast majority of people here the most simple solution is just do what the regulator wants and get the European papers. Yes, there are difficult cases (e.g. is it really worth the effort if I only spend 3 months a year in Europe and the rest of the year in the US), but those are quite limited.

I would agree, except that getting the European papers is more than 10 €

More like 10000 € and a huge waste of somebody’s life, especially as [if] he already holds the papers which are an internationally valid IR, and the European paper requirement is nothing more than a middle finger to America, by Brussels, as a part of some negotiation landscape, in which GA got caught up as some tiny bit in the corner. Anyway, all been done before. I even heard from one insider that in the same bucket was stuff on allowing European airlines to do internal flights within the US.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Malibuflyer wrote:

If you only spend a couple of weeks per year within the EU and while here you stay in a hotel then no judge will assume that you are a resident.
If you spend a significant time of the year in the EU and live in an owned or permanently rented home, every judge will assume you are resident.

If we take the regulation as what it was meant for and not try to find loopholes in individual words, 95% of cases are pretty clear (not implying that you might not be one of the 5%).

I know some people that spend so much time searching for loopholes that they could actually save time, money and hassle by just getting their European papers…

That ‘judge will assume’ question is one reason I’m extremely glad to be living in a country where one has a right to a trial by jury for any reasonably serious offence.

Residency is a complex issue and just owning a home doesn’t make you resident, at least not in most places. Even in jurisdictions where the question will be decided by judge who is really a paid government official, you are unlikely to encounter such an obvious stitch-up as “you are resident because I say you are”. At the root of the ‘problem’ is that to declare someone resident in e.g. Germany implies that they are not resident in another country, when in fact they may have compelling evidence that they are, or are treated as such by foreign authorities.

The wording is deliberately ambiguous to ensure maximum FUD, and EASA evidently has no interest in it being clarified or tested. You can tell this by the inclusion of words and phrases (“established, residing or with a principal place of business”) which any lawyer would look at and declare: “there is no generally-accepted legal definition of that, it would have to be argued on a case-by-case basis”.

Then there’s the question of who exactly would prosecute you, and in which country.

EGLM & EGTN

Graham wrote:

At the root of the ‘problem’ is that to declare someone resident in e.g. Germany implies that they are not resident in another country, when in fact they may have compelling evidence that they are, or are treated as such by foreign authorities.

What type of “residency” you are talking about? Tax residency? Social security residency? Citizenship residency? All have different definitions and in many of those you can very well be resident in more than one country.

Graham wrote:

You can tell this by the inclusion of words and phrases (“established, residing or with a principal place of business”) which any lawyer would look at and declare

You can’t. The only reason why those “words and phrases” are included in the paragraph is, because they refers to different objects. Depending on if you are talking about an individual, a domestic company or an establishment of a foreign company you have to use different terms.
Residency is the one that applies to natural persons – for those the other 2 are irrelevant.

Germany

Malibuflyer wrote:

What type of “residency” you are talking about? Tax residency? Social security residency? Citizenship residency? All have different definitions and in many of those you can very well be resident in more than one country.

That’s my point. It’s phrased so as not to refer to any of them specifically. To leave the undefined term ‘residency’ as the one that must be argued over. To leave it open to a judge to say “I have decided you are resident insofar as the term applies to this regulation”.

Malibuflyer wrote:

Residency is the one that applies to natural persons

And isn’t defined. As I said, I’m extremely glad to live somewhere where such questions of fact, if they need to be established as part of a serious prosecution, are not decided by a government employee.

And who would prosecute you, where? It is not unknown for people to ignore attempts by a foreign government, or supra-national body, to prosecute them.

Last Edited by Graham at 27 Jan 11:12
EGLM & EGTN
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