The step-by-step plan for Switzerland

With this step you know where you stand: you have the right to live in Switzerland, and the permit only confirms that right.

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. One thing does have to happen, and this is where Switzerland differs from Germany or Spain: 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". The Swiss migration service speaks of a legal entitlement. That means: if you meet the conditions, you're entitled to the permit.

That's something quite different from the American or Australian route. There, an official may decide whether you may come. If you're refused in Switzerland anyway, you can appeal, all the way to the Bundesgericht (the highest Swiss court).

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

With this step you know an advantage that most emigration sites don't: as a Dutch citizen you wait half as long for permanent residence.

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. The Netherlands is such a country, on the basis of an exchange of notes (an agreement by letter between two governments) 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.
• The restrictions on the labour market disappear.
• It's also the permit you need if you ever want to become Swiss.

If you're seriously considering staying, let this advantage weigh in your decision.

With this step you see where the money really goes, before you judge a salary.

The permit itself is cheap. The agreement forbids Switzerland to charge more for it than a national identity card costs. In practice it's a few tens of francs. The money is in two other places:

• The health insurance. It applies per person, and no employer contributes to it.
• The rental market. You pay a deposit of up to three months, on a blocked account.

Work it out with your own family composition. A Swiss gross wage says little without these two items beside it.

With this step you choose where you'll live. With it you also choose your language and your tax.

Switzerland is a country of 26 cantons, a kind of federal states. That's not folklore but administrative reality. The canton arranges a lot itself:

• It issues your permit.
• It sets the fees.
• It levies its own taxes.
• It arranges your premium reduction, a discount on your health premium.
• It determines the language.

The constitution has four national languages: German, French, Italian and Romansh. Each canton chooses its own official language, the language in which the government works there. 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. It also determines the language of your rental contract and your tax return, 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.

In this step you check together whether everyone stands behind the decision. No forms are involved, and yet this is where most journeys fail. Take the choice of a canton, and so of a language, into this conversation.

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 Switzerland? 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 Switzerland 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 Dutch or a citizen of another EU or EFTA country, your partner has a right of their own to live and work there. If your partner has another nationality, marriage is what counts here. If you're married, your partner may come along as a family member under the free movement agreement, with a residence permit of their own and the right to work. If you're not married, that right doesn't apply automatically. Then ask the canton's migration office what's possible. And in Switzerland you pay the health premium per person, also for a partner without an income. That's further on in your plan, at your health insurance.

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.

Where you go to live decides in which language your child goes to school. In German-speaking cantons Swiss German comes on top, as the language of the playground. The teaching material is in standard German.

Who learns the language, and when? That depends on your canton. Switzerland has four national languages: German, French, Italian and Romansh, and each canton chooses its own official language. Your tenancy agreement and your tax return will be in it. 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.

With this step you give the journey a fixed point: the date by which you want to have left.

That date isn't set in stone. Still, you need it, because the deadlines of this journey only take on meaning against a departure day: fourteen days to register, and three months for your health insurance with retroactive premium. The choice of canton and the housing search also take time, and you can only plan that 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.