A growing number of holders of special residence cards issued by the Protocol Directorate of the Belgian Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs, card S or card P, apply for long-term resident status after five years of residence in Belgium. This status grants unlimited residence. The Immigration Office has recently changed its practice in order to refuse these applications. It no longer argues that a special status is excluded as a matter of principle, a ground the Council for Alien Law Litigation has set aside several times. It now claims that the card is temporary by nature. In Altea's view, this reading holds up neither under EU law nor under Belgian law.
A shift in the Immigration Office's reasoning
Long-term resident status is governed by Article 15bis of the Law of 15 December 1980 on access to the territory, residence, establishment and removal of foreign nationals, which transposes Council Directive 2003/109/EC of 25 November 2003 concerning the status of third-country nationals who are long-term residents. It is acquired after five years of lawful and uninterrupted residence. Article 15bis sets aside certain categories, including foreign nationals who reside "exclusively on temporary grounds" and those whose status is governed by the diplomatic and consular conventions it lists. For years the Office refused the card on the basis of that last category. The Council for Alien Law Litigation held that this list is exhaustive and therefore does not indiscriminately cover every member of staff of international organisations. The Office now turns to the temporary-residence ground, arguing that card P is temporary because it is tied to the duration of a mission.
Why this reading fails under EU law
The Court of Justice of the European Union has settled the question. In its judgment of 7 September 2022 (C-624/20), delivered by the Grand Chamber, it held that the notion of residence exclusively on temporary grounds is "an autonomous concept of EU law which must be interpreted uniformly" throughout the Member States. The classification given by a national authority or by the Protocol is therefore irrelevant. The test is objective. Residence is excluded only where its ground implies, from the outset, that it is "strictly limited in time and intended to be of short duration". Employment within an international organisation durably established in Belgium does not display that feature.
In an earlier judgment of 18 October 2012 (C-502/10), the Court had already held that a temporary residence permit does not make the ground of the residence temporary, and that a permit renewable without limit is an indication of durable settlement. The card follows the employment for as long as it lasts. Residence that is in fact unlimited residence cannot therefore be treated as short-term or temporary. To reach that conclusion, the Court distinguishes two categories of residence excluded by the directive (Article 3(2)(e)): on the one hand, residence based exclusively on temporary grounds and, on the other, residence based on a formally limited residence permit. The Court recalls that this latter notion is an autonomous concept of EU law that does not depend on the classification adopted by national law alone. Thus, the Court holds that a fixed-term residence permit which is nevertheless renewable without limit cannot be regarded as formally limited within the meaning of the directive where the restrictions attached to the permit do not prevent the holder's durable settlement. It further states that this conclusion holds even where national law provides no possibility of obtaining a residence permit of indefinite duration.
Why this reading fails under Belgian law
Article 15bis does not exclude special residence cards. The Council for Alien Law Litigation recalled this, in particular, in its judgment no. 335.083 of 28 October 2025, holding that "the Law of 15 December 1980 contains no general provision excluding from its scope foreign nationals who hold a special status in Belgium".
On the ground based on the temporary nature of the residence, judgment no. 327.545 of 3 June 2025, delivered in Dutch, holds that nothing establishes that a special residence title such as card P means, by definition, exclusively temporary residence. The Council held that merely holding a special identity card (here of the P type) is not sufficient to establish that the holder's residence is necessarily of an exclusively temporary nature. The Council notes that the employment underlying the special residence was not temporary, and also that the family had been residing in Belgium for ten years. The judge thus rightly carried out an in concreto assessment of the integration of the person claiming long-term resident status and of that person's family.
The Royal Decree of 30 October 1991 on residence documents in Belgium for certain foreign nationals confirms the analysis. It issues the special card to the staff of international organisations governed by public law (Article 3, 3°) and reserves the word exclusively for Members of the European Parliament alone (Article 3, 4°). It sets no maximum duration.
An interference with fundamental rights and with families
Claiming that a special or protocol residence would, in any event and by nature, be temporary is therefore inaccurate.
Moreover, the consequences of this refusal fall on whole families. For example, a spouse kept under special residence cards may not, absent a reciprocity agreement, take up gainful employment without losing the title (Article 6 of the Royal Decree of 30 October 1991). The spouse must choose between a career and the status. In addition, for children born in Belgium, access to Belgian nationality requires, in particular, unlimited residence of one of the parents at the time of the declaration (Article 11bis of the Belgian Nationality Code). Thus, by refusing access to long-term resident status, the Office closes that route de facto, including for children born and schooled in Belgium for many years and whose parents are durably established in Belgium. The best interests of the child and the right to respect for private and family life also call for an individual assessment, which the blanket refusal practice denounced here does not provide.
Céline Verbrouck
Attorney at the Brussels Bar
Specialised in immigration law, private international law, nationality law and family law
www.altea.be
+32 2 894 45 70