Czech Temporary Residence Certificate – EU citizens

Are you an EU citizen moving to or living in Prague (Czech Republic)? Would you like to get settled properly? Then you might need to get the Temporary Residence Certificate. Keep reading to find out more about it.

UPDATED ACCORDING TO THE LATEST IMMIGRATION CHANGES FROM 2.8.2021 – CHANGES MARKED IN RED

What is the Certificate of Temporary Residence?

The Certificate of Temporary Residence (“Potvrzení o přechodném pobytu” in Czech) is an official document issued by the Czech Ministry of the Interior saying that you officially reside in the Czech Republic. It is basically a folded piece of A5 paper with your personal information and stamp of the MOI. It looks like this:

Getting the Certificate is officially not obligatory, but it is recommended by the MOI if you plan on staying for longer than 3 months. In our experience, if you plan on staying for a year or longer, you will need it at some point so it is better to get ahead of yourself and simply get it right away.

Effective from 2.8.2021 the document will no longer be called Certificate of Temporary Residence. It will be called “Registration certificate” instead. At this point we don’t know that for sure but we expect it to be exactly the same document, just label differently.

Getting the Certificate brings you couple advantages and one (sometimes) disadvantage.

Advantages of having the Temporary Residence Certificate

There are many advantages to having the Residence Certificate from which some are kind of expected and “normal”, some of them are less expected. We can qualify registering your car, getting a parking permit, getting a mortgage, getting your kids into school etc. as “normal”. The Temporary Residence Certificate proved to be crucial in some other situations we could have never imagined before such as Brexit (British who did not have the Temporary Residence Certificate are already considered and treated as non-EU citizens with all that it brings) or COVID (during the first lockown in 2020, even those EU citizens who had lived in CZE for years, were not allowed to travel if they did not have their Residence Certificate).

Disadvantage of having the Temporary Residence Certificate

This probably depends on point of view but when you get the Residence Certificate, there is an official record of you in the Czech Republic. So, if you for some reason (often tax related from our experience) do not want the Czech Republic to know about your presence here, the Temporary Residence Certificate is not for you.

How to get the Temporary Residence Certificate

Getting the Temporary Residence Certificate is, in comparison to some other things you might deal with in the Czec Republic, not too complicated. You still need to count with spending couple hours gathering documents and waiting in lines though, as well as with some trouble with communication with the MOI.

First you need to collect the following documents:

• application form – new updated form
• your original passport/national ID,
• 1 passport sized photo,
• proof of accommodation,
• documents on the purpose of your stay – no longer needed from 2.8.2021 but you still might need to submit some proves of purpose of stay to avoid submitting the proof of health insurance, or/and when applying as a married couple,
• health insurance (if the purpose of your stay is not employment or business),
• 200 CZK admin fee – paid of course not in cash or by card, but in special revenue stamps (so called “kolky”) which you can buy basically at any post office.

You then need to deliver the documents to the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) responsible for the area of where you live.

The official language of the Czech Republic is Czech so all the officers at the MOI are instructed to speak Czech with you. There are a few called “Intercultural workers” who are instructed to speak with you in English as a trial project paid for by the EU. You need to be lucky to get to them though since they are mainly there to help non-EU citizens.

Once you submit the all the documents, you wait. If there was something missing or incorrect in the documents, the MOI will send you an official letter requesting the corrected documents and giving you a deadline to do so. If you provide the documents, they will approve the certificate. If you don’t provide them or not in the given deadline, they will deny your application. In any case, they officially have 30 days to let you know the decision.

If everything was alright and your Residence Certificate is approved, you have to go to the MOI in person and collect the certificate. It is best to book an appointment for that, otherwise you might end up waiting for quite long.

Is there an easier option?

Even though it is generally not complicated to get the Certificate, there are still some obstacles you might face. If you want the whole process to go smoothly and you want to make sure you’ll get the Certificate as soon as possible with the least possible hassle, we advice you to use our services.

We offer two options, one (cheaper) for people who want to do it on their own and they just want to have some guidance, and one (standard price) for people who just want to give us a Power of Attorney so we can get everything done on their behalf.

See what some of our clients say about our services:

It is super easy to contact us (forms everywhere on the website, chat on the right, e-mail, phone, Facebook, Instagram, …), we react fast and we’ll be happy to help you get your Temporary Residence Certificate asap! Get in touch and you’ll see 🙂