If you’re an EU citizen living in Poland, when it comes to the mortgage loan a residence registration certificate is a must have. I’ve recently been in a Voivodship Office in Wroclaw with my client to get this registration done and I thought it could be a good idea to post a tutorial on my blog, in which I will describe this procedure step by step.

Every EU citizen who comes to Poland for a longer period of time, for example in order to work here, is obliged to register their stay after 3 months. If you don’t do this, probably nothing happens, at least not until you want to, for example… apply for a mortgage loan.

Registration of residence is a legal obligation, therefore all Polish banks require a residence registration certificate to be attached to the credit application. And this applies to all types of loans, not only mortgage loans.

That’s how it was with my client. Santiago is a Spanish citizen who lives and works in Wroclaw. It turned out that he had not registered his stay yet, but he wanted to apply for a mortgage. So we went to the Lower Silesian Voivodship Office (Dolnoslaski Urzad Wojewodzki) in Wroclaw in order to start the procedure.

“Certificate of registration of an EU citizen’s residence”

This is exactly what you need to get. And it looks this way (of course I’ve changed personal details):

It is relatively easy to apply for the registration of an EU citizen’s residence (unlike the procedure for obtaining a residence card, which is a nightmare lasting many months), but the problem is the waiting time for the certificate stating that you are registered.

We have been informed that the aproximate waiting time is 4-6 weeks. That’s why it is not a good idea to put off completing this formality because sooner or later you will be asked for this document and whatever it may be, you may find yourself in an uncomfortable situation.

Paperwork you need to go through to apply for an EU-citizen Residence Registration

Of course, it was not possible without collecting a few documents. This is the basic set for someone who is an employee or is self-employed:

application
passport or ID card
proof of health insurance cover
employment certificate from the employer
residence address certificate (meldunek)

As for people running a business in Poland:

a photocopy of an excerpt from the National Court Register, Regon, NIP or a photocopy of the certificate of entry into the Central Register and Information on Economic Activity (CEiDG).

Detailed guidelines concerning the required documents can be found on the website of any voivodeship office. I used the website of the Lower Silesian Voivodship Office, and here is a link to the tab dedicated to the registration of an EU citizen’s residence.

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Some tips & hacks for documentation

Passport & ID Card – take both of them with you if possible. In ZUS it turned out that Santiago is registered in the system on the basis of his ID (in the contract of employment there were ID data as well). If he had had only a passport with him, the data in the documents would not have matched those in the system.
Confirmation of health insurance coverage – your employer can make out such a document for you (keyword: ZUS-ZUA – with a signature and a stamp of some HR person), but if your HR is in another city and you have no time to waste, you can arrange it ‘on the spot’ in ZUS and that’s how we did it with Santiago.
A certificate of employment from the employer – we found out that a copy of the employment contract is enough, which, as in the case of an insurance certificate, simplifies the matter and possibly saves a few days.
Address certificate – you’ll get it in your municipal office. More informations about obtaining an address certificate you’ll get here or here.
You can write a request for speeding up the process – we’ve done so. Not that we should particularly believe that this will help, but if it doesn’t cost anything, why not? In a form of a handwritten application, in a few sentences. As a reason we truthfully reported that Santiago needed a certificate to file a mortgage application and couldn’t wait 1.5 months.
If you are registered in Poland as a sole trader (self-employed), a printout from CEiDG will suffice. If your company is registered in the National Court Register, take a printout from the National Court Register and attach the NIP and REGON assignment confirmations.
Copy all the documents and take the originals with you – this is obvious and still worth mentioning. Although only copies of the documents are required for the application, do not forget to take the originals with you – a clerk must see each document in its original form.

Like a boss…

We arrived at the Voidvoidship Office just before the opening, but it turned out that the queue for “numbers” is already about 100 metres long. When we finally reached the ticket machine, it turned out that in our “category” we got assigned the ticket no. 1!

I couldn’t resist posting it on Wroclaw Expats FB group:

There were a lot of people ahead of us and probably if our case belonged to the category of ‘passport‘ or ‘residence card‘ we would have got the number 100 or worse.

Category you need to pick on the ticket machine is: Zaproszenie / Obywatele Unii Europejskiej (UE)

Our number popped up and the message next to it read: counter A or B. We rushed to find the given counter and… it wasn’t there. There is no such a counter! I was immediately reminded of The Trial by Kafka and Joseph K. Then I saw a sign: “Counters A and B are behind the waiting room”.

Where is the waiting room? Here it is! We are running. I can see from the angle of my eye that the number on the board has already turned to G003, but finally we are there, we are sitting in front of a clerk and after 10 minutes the matter is settled. So the last tip: the counters A&B are behind the waiting room! 🙂

Why does it take so long to get this residence registration?

When we left, I said to Santiago that he still ought to be ‘screened by the secret service‘ and he is going to receive an official letter announcing it. This is what the clerk kindly informed us. You had to see his face – let’s say he was slightly surprised 🙂

About a two weeks later Santiago received a letter from Voivodship Office informed that they’ve send a query to the three services:

Commandant in Chief of the Border Guard
Voivodeship Police Commander
ABW (Inner Security Agency)

Each of them have to check and reply to the Voivodship Office if Santiago will not cause a risk to a national security, public safety or public order. It’s a standard mail procedure. Probably that’s the answer why does it take so much time to obtain a registration of residence of an EU citizen in Poland.

The application has been submitted, it only remains to wait.

I hope that this post will be in any way helpful. In a comment under the post I’m going to give an update on how much time it took to receive the certificate and whether any other issues came about.

Write to me (kamil@polishmortgage.pl) if you’re thinking of getting a registration and you need some information – I’ll help out where I can. And if you have already registered your stay, please share your experience with others in a comment under the post.

All documents you need (as a foreign) to apply for a mortgage in Poland I’ve described in this two post: EU citizens and non-EU citizens.