Eligibility and conditions score around halfway to best practice. The government used the occasion of the transposition of the EC Directive on family reunion to raise the minimum age for sponsors and spouses to 21 in certain cases. A sponsor can be reunited after a year or less with his unmarried minor children and his adult handicapped children. Under favourable conditions, sponsors do not have to prove sufficient economicresources, and family members do not have to complete a language or integration course (see box). Reunited families are partially secure in their status. Their rights would meet best practice with two improvements: if adult family members could enjoy equal access to employment as their sponsor, and if all family members - not just spouses and adult children - could obtain autonomous residence permits.
