The step-by-step plan for Czechia

As a Dutch citizen you need no visa and may live in Czechia without a permit. The registration certificate for EU citizens is voluntary: you apply for it if you want it, and the law obliges you to nothing.

Except one thing. Whoever stays longer than thirty days reports to the Foreign Police within thirty days of entry. That is a form, it costs nothing, and it is the step almost everyone skips — precisely because the rest is voluntary.

The tax. The treaty dates from 1974 and has never been amended, and here that is good news. Pensions from past employment are taxable only in the state of residence, and because the treaty has no social security article, your AOW falls under the residual article — also exclusively with the state of residence. So the Netherlands lets go, provided you apply for the wage tax exemption.

And Czechia itself? It exempts regularly paid pensions from a mandatory scheme up to thirty-six times the minimum wage a year, expressly including a foreign mandatory scheme of the same kind. What falls under that and what doesn't is the question you put to a tax adviser.

Healthcare. Czechia is a treaty country. With a Dutch statutory pension you go through the CAK: an S1 form, enrolment with a Czech health insurer, and you're entitled to full care.

Prague has the international schools, the English-speaking doctors and the prices of a Western European capital. Brno, Olomouc and Plzeň have much of that for a good deal less. The countryside of South Bohemia, Moravia and the border regions has the peace and the low prices, and there Czech is the only language at the counter.

Go and look in winter. The winters are cold and grey, and in the valleys and the smaller towns the winter air quality is something you don't see on a summer visit.

The paperwork is cheap here: the report is free, the registration certificate costs a few tenners, the driving licence doesn't need exchanging and the car comes along without excise duty. The money sits in the move itself and in the first months — and in Prague in the rent too.

Discuss the language before you choose the place. Outside Prague and Brno, Czech is the language of the school, the GP and the neighbours, and for children that is a different task than for adults who work from home there. Whoever stays in the city buys convenience; whoever goes out buys space and a language to learn.

From here everything counts back. This journey has two thirty-day clocks you have to start yourself: the report at the Foreign Police after entry, and the registration of the car after the car's entry. Put them both in your diary on the day your date is fixed.