Rome: The long-term residents directive reform is set to disappear from the EU agenda. According to the Commission’s 2027 work programme, presented on 4 November 2026, the Commission has decided to withdraw its April 2022 proposal to revise Directive 2003/109, a file that has been stalled for more than four years.

The proposal aimed to make it easier for third-country nationals to obtain EU long-term resident status after five years of legal residence. It also sought to strengthen their right to live and work in another Member State. Supporters saw it as a way to give settled migrants more security and to help employers find skilled workers across borders.

Negotiations never produced a deal. Two trilogues, in November 2023 and January 2024, ended without agreement, and a blocking minority in the Council led to a suspension in early March 2024. Parliament wanted a three-year residence requirement and intra-EU mobility that came closer to free movement, while the Council wanted to limit the scope of the status and the types of residence that count.

Member States also disagreed over who should benefit. Governments could not settle whether time spent as a student, a seasonal worker or a beneficiary of temporary protection should count towards the residence period. Those questions touch national labour markets and migration policy, which explains why capitals held firm.

The Commission now says the long-term residents directive file is unlikely to secure an agreement within a reasonable timeframe. It adds that elements of the recast may feed into future legislation to attract talent for innovation. That wording suggests the institution wants to rescue the mobility ideas in another form rather than abandon them entirely.

The withdrawal has consequences for the existing law. Directive 2003/109 stays in force unchanged, so third-country nationals keep the status and the rights it provides today. The update that would have eased the path to mobility and shortened some requirements will not arrive through this proposal.

For migrants already living in the Union, the practical message is continuity rather than change. Anyone who holds long-term resident status keeps it, and national rules on mobility between Member States stay as they are. The long-term residents directive in its current form has long been criticised for making cross-border moves difficult, and that criticism will now return in the debate on talent. Migration lawyers expect the long-term residents directive to remain a reference point in the talent debate.

Attention will now turn to the talent-attraction initiatives that the Commission hints at. Parliament, which pushed for a more ambitious text, may object to the withdrawal, and the Council will weigh whether a narrower proposal can pass where the long-term residents directive failed.