The step-by-step plan for Poland

In this step you see what you have to arrange in Poland to live there. As a Dutch citizen you need no visa: you drive across the border and nobody asks anything. The first three months you may be there without conditions. That is exactly why this journey is underestimated.

If you stay longer, Poland has two separate registrations for you, at two counters. Each has its own deadline:

• The zameldowanie is your address registration at the municipality. You do it within thirty days of moving into your home. It gives you the PESEL number, the Polish personal number everything hangs on.
• The rejestracja pobytu is the registration of your right of residence as an EU citizen. You do it with the voivode, the central government's representative in your province. It has to be done no later than the day after your first three months end.

Whoever does one often thinks they're done. You need both.

One group falls outside the second registration. If you hold Polish nationality alongside the Dutch, you're not an EU citizen in Poland but a Pole. You then register no right of residence. The address registration and the PESEL do apply to you.

In this step you find out which country taxes your income, and how your healthcare is arranged. On both points most Dutch-language pages still tell how it was before 2022.

The tax. The tax treaty of 2002 placed your pension with Poland. The protocol that entered into force on 30 April 2022 reversed that. Such a protocol is an amendment to the treaty. Since then, pensions and social security payments that come from the Netherlands may be taxed in the Netherlands.

So the Netherlands taxes your occupational pension and your AOW. Poland credits the Dutch tax against its own: it deducts what you pay in the Netherlands from the Polish tax. A wage tax exemption, where the Netherlands withholds nothing, as with Spain or Portugal, no longer exists here.

Healthcare. Poland is a treaty country: a country the Netherlands has healthcare agreements with. If you have a Dutch statutory pension, such as the AOW, your healthcare goes through the CAK. This is how it works:

• You get an S1 form through the CAK.
• With that form you register with the NFZ, the Polish health fund.
• After that you're treated as if you were insured in Poland.

For this you pay the treaty contribution, your premium for this healthcare. It comes off your Dutch pension.

In this step you choose where in Poland you want to live. Warsaw, Kraków, Wrocław and the Tricity on the Baltic (Gdańsk, Gdynia and Sopot) have the international schools, the English-speaking doctors and the direct flights. The countryside of Podlasie, Lubelskie or the Carpathians has the low prices. For many readers of this plan, the family lives there too.

Go and look in January, not in July. The winter counts in your choice. The cold lasts for weeks. And in the cities you then see the winter air quality, which you don't see on a summer visit.

Count the language in too. At the counter, at the notary and at the GP you speak Polish. In the big cities you manage with English, outside them not.

In this step you see what the move is going to cost you. The good news: the paperwork here is almost free.

• The registrations cost nothing.
• Your driving licence doesn't need exchanging.
• The car comes along without excise duty if you meet the conditions. Excise duty is the Polish tax on bringing in a car.

The money sits in the move itself and in the first months.

In this step you talk about the move as a family. With Poland, for many families this conversation is about going back, not about going away. One generation knows the country, the other knows it from holidays. Children who grew up in the Netherlands then move to the country of their parents, not to their own.

Going alone? Then have this conversation with the people you're leaving behind. The questions below work for them too.

Take three evenings. One conversation is too short for a decision like this. Set aside three evenings, a week apart. Talk with your partner, and depending on their age with your children too:

• Evening 1, why. Why do we want this? What do we hope to find in Poland? What are we leaving behind here? Would that really be different there?
• Evening 2, what we give up. Who and what will we miss? What are we dreading most? What do we do if it disappoints?
• Evening 3, the conditions. What needs to be in place for each of us to say yes? When do we check together whether it's going well, for example after six and after twelve months? And what would be a reason for us to come back?

Write the conditions down. On the kitchen-table card it all fits on one A4 sheet.

Divide the work. Agree who takes on which part of this plan: the papers, the house and the cancellations, the school, the move. That way not one of you carries everything. Invite your partner into your plan; then you both see what's done.

Is one of you going without an income of your own? Someone who lives in Poland and doesn't work in the Netherlands usually stops building up AOW. AOW is the Dutch state pension. For every year you're not insured, you later get 2 percent less AOW. From the moment you're no longer insured, you have one year to take out voluntary insurance with the SVB.

Also discuss whether that partner keeps an account and money of their own, and how you decide together on big expenses.

Married, registered or living together? That can matter for your partner's right of residence, for being insured together for healthcare and for inheritance. If your partner is an EU citizen, your partner has a right of residence of their own. If your partner has a nationality from outside the EU, your partner lives in Poland as a family member of an EU citizen. Not every EU country treats a registered partnership as a marriage. If you're neither married nor registered, the country decides case by case, on the basis of a durable relationship. Check in the step on your healthcare further on in your plan what applies to you.

Are children coming? How you tell them depends on their age:

• Up to about four. Tell them shortly before the move and keep fixed routines, such as the bedtime ritual and the cuddly toy in the hand luggage.
• Primary school. Tell them well in advance and let them look along: photos of the school, the neighbourhood and the house. Let them choose something, such as their room.
• Teenagers. Involve them in the decision itself. For them, saying goodbye to friends weighs heaviest. Agree how they'll stay in touch and when they'll see their friends again.

Discuss the language at school too. Whoever spoke Polish at the kitchen table in the Netherlands doesn't automatically speak the Polish of a Polish classroom. A child who doesn't master the language is entitled to free extra Polish lessons. More on that further on in your plan, at the school.

Who learns the language, and when? In Poland that's Polish, even if one of you already spoke it at home. Often the partner without work needs the language most, and that's exactly the one with no colleagues to practise with. Plan it together, preferably before you leave.

In this step you choose the date you want to move. From that date everything counts back. This journey has four deadlines you start yourself:

• Within thirty days of moving in you register your address.
• No later than the day after three months you register your right of residence.
• Within thirty days of the car entering Poland you arrange the registration plate.
• Within twelve months of settling you bring the car in, or it can no longer come without excise duty.

Put all four in your diary on the day your date is fixed.