Family reunification

There is more than one cost, and the fee is only part of it. Alongside the application fee you should expect expenses for translating documents and for biometric registration, and in some cases a financial security deposit.

Under EU rules there is generally no application fee at all. Under the Danish national rules the government fee is currently around DKK 9,000.

For the legal work, our fee for a family reunification case is typically between DKK 15,000 and 20,000, depending on how involved the case turns out to be. You will have the figure before anything starts.

It depends on which set of rules your application falls under. Family reunification under EU rules usually takes about one to three months. Under the Danish national rules it is closer to eight months. If the authorities come back asking for further documentation, add to both figures.

Much of the delay we see is avoidable. A file that arrives complete, with the relationship properly documented from the start, does not go back and forth. Where a case is genuinely complicated, having someone follow it up with the authorities and answer their questions promptly is usually what keeps it moving.

Yes. A refusal of family reunification usually leaves two routes open: asking the immigration authorities to reopen the case, or appealing to the Immigration Appeals Board (Udlændingenævnet). Which of the two fits depends on what the refusal actually says and on the circumstances behind it.

That is the reason to have the decision read closely before anything is filed. A refusal that turns on a missing document is a different problem from one that turns on how the authorities have assessed your relationship, and the two call for different answers. Getting that right is often what turns a refusal into a residence permit.

The most common causes are documentation that does not go far enough, financial requirements that are not met, and housing or integration requirements that fall short. A case can also be refused because the authorities are not satisfied that the relationship has been sufficiently documented, or because they suspect it is a pro forma arrangement.

In what we see, the integration requirement and suspicion of pro forma account for a large share of refusals between them. The assessment on the Danish side is thorough and it is strict, and a deficiency that looks minor from the outside can be enough on its own.

That is the argument for getting the file right before it goes in rather than repairing it afterwards. Where a pro forma assessment is already in play the work is different again: it is about building up the evidence that the relationship is real and closing off every requirement still open to doubt.

It depends entirely on whether you apply under the Danish national rules or under EU free movement rules. The two are not variations on a theme. They differ both in what they require and in how strictly the authorities read the file.

The national rules are the harder of the two. An application under them normally has to satisfy the 24 year rule, a housing requirement, a requirement that you can support yourself without public assistance, a financial security deposit, and the integration requirements. These cases also reach further back: your earlier residence history and how integration has gone can be weighed alongside the formal conditions. On top of that, the Danish Immigration Service examines closely whether the marriage or the relationship is genuine, and that examination is thorough. It is the part of the process where a well prepared file makes the clearest difference, and where a lawyer can also tell you whether an exemption from one of the requirements is realistic in your situation.

Under the EU rules the conditions are looser. There is no equivalent demand on housing, income or integration. What has to be shown instead is that the EU citizen genuinely made use of free movement by living in another member state, and that the relationship itself is documented. SIRI still looks carefully at whether the relationship is genuine, so that part does not go away, but the assessment is generally more lenient than under the national rules.

The short version is that the national rules ask more of you and the EU rules ask less. What they have in common is that both stand or fall on documentation of a real relationship. That is the one thing worth putting effort into before you send anything, whichever route applies to you.