The step-by-step plan for Switzerland

Switzerland isn't an EU member, but since 2002 an agreement on the free movement of persons has applied. For you that means: no visa, and you enter on your identity card. What does have to happen — and where Switzerland differs from Germany or Spain — is that you apply for a residence permit.

Don't be afraid of that word. The permit is declaratory: it doesn't grant you the right, it proves it. The agreement says so literally — as proof of this right a residence permit is issued — and the Swiss migration service speaks of a legal entitlement as soon as you meet the conditions. That's something quite different from the American or Australian route, where an official may decide whether you may come. If you're refused anyway, an appeal is open all the way to the Bundesgericht.

One practical fact straight away: if you have an employment contract of at most three months, you don't need a permit at all.

Here's something most emigration sites don't know. Switzerland grants the permanent settlement permit (the C permit) after five years of uninterrupted residence to citizens of countries with which it has a settlement agreement — and the Netherlands is such a country, on the basis of an exchange of notes from 1935. Citizens of, for instance, Poland, Hungary or Croatia in principle have to wait ten years.

Why that matters: with a C permit your residence is unlimited and unconditional, you don't lose it after six months abroad but only after four years, and the restrictions on the labour market disappear. It's also the permit you need if you ever want to become Swiss. For a Dutch citizen seriously considering staying, this halves the waiting time — that may weigh in your decision.

The permit itself is cheap — the agreement forbids Switzerland to charge more for it than a national identity card costs, and in practice it's a few tens of francs. The money is elsewhere: in the health insurance, which applies per person and to which no employer contributes, and in the rental market with a deposit of up to three months on a blocked account. Work it out with your own family composition before you judge a salary; a Swiss gross wage says little without these two items beside it.

Switzerland is a country of 26 cantons, and that's not folklore but administrative reality: the canton issues your permit, sets the fees, levies its own taxes, arranges your premium reduction and determines the language. The constitution has four national languages — German, French, Italian and Romansh — and lets each canton choose its own official language. Four cantons are officially multilingual.

That makes the choice of canton a real decision and not a detail. Where you'll live determines in which language your child goes to school, in which language your rental contract and your tax return are, and how much tax you pay — the differences between cantons are large. Discuss this explicitly with your family, and if you can, visit two cantons before you choose.

Set a date by which you want to have left. Not because it's fixed, but because the clocks of this journey — fourteen days to register, three months for your health insurance with retroactive premium — only take on meaning against a departure day, and because the choice of canton and the housing search take time that you can only plan against a date.

Vertrekklaar works out for you whether it fits, and says so honestly if it doesn't. Shifting is always allowed — the date is yours, not the tool's.