EU Employer demands birth certificate - Why? My brother is Irish, he starts a job as manager of a bar in France. He provided his Irish Passport for id, and the employer wants an original birth certificate. My understanding is birth certificate, without being notarised, are not recognised outside there country of issue. In addition, they are not official documents for id (since they lack a photo). However, my understanding is passports are officially recognised internationally as id. Two other brothers live in Germany and Spain, both residents of those countries, both obtained their residency without any need for birth certificates (just passports). Birth certificates can be used as part of identity theft so alarm bells ring for me. Is there any reason why an employer might demand a birth certificate? Is there any reason why an Irish passport would not suffice?
This is weird. Within the EU, a passport is proof of identity, and it is also proof that you are allowed to take a job in the EU. There is nothing that a birth certificate would add to this. Either the bar manager is badly misinformed, or he doesn't want to give your brother a job, and will come up with something even more ridiculous if he gets the birth certificate.
The PDF you linked also lists &quot;REAL ID Driver’s License/ID Card&quot; as an acceptable document in Group B. So, it seems that an out-of-state driver's license may be used to verify DOB, but only if it complies with the REAL ID requirements. Apparently, all 50 states are now issuing REAL IDs, but only 38% of all licenses nationwide are currently REAL ID compliant.
The issues you describe have existed with signatures from the beginning of their use. There exists a tradeoff between ease of use and reliability, both of forgery and of people falsely claiming forgery. Originally, the closest thing to a signature was the use of seals and signet rings. While relatively hard to forge, it only showed that the possessor of the object agreed. Signatures, especially in cursive font, were developed later. They were in some ways easier to forge(you didn't need to get access to a physical device), but more difficult in others(the seal symbols tended to be used on everything and various improvements in technology had been made), and harder to falsely claim forgery(because most people can't alter their handwriting well). You were affixing your name to the document, indicating that you agreed. Often, the signatures were required to backed up with the signatures of other people as witnesses. They didn't have to agree to the document, they just had to agree to testify that you signed of your own free will. Because witnesses, especially trustworthy and independent witnesses, are hard to come by, some places have dropped that requirement, such as checks and signing a aper receipt when using a credit card. But for some important documents, certain jurisdictions still require witnesses, including large transactions (a document relating to a car insurance payout I recently had required a witness to confirm my signature) and marriages. However, with electronic media, the point of a signature is more to indicate deliberate acceptance of terms, with verification of an individual being left to other processes (e.g. IP address, MAC address, linkage to a specific email account, etc.), so forgery is less of an issue. I have also seen "signatures" amount to checkboxes and "I agree" buttons. Generally, the higher the stakes and "more legal" the agreement, the more likely to these have been the "typed signatures" that you describe, but this seems to be decreasing in frequency, suggesting that its purpose was to stop gap a hole in legal acceptance by judges/courts/laws with regards to electronic communications. Addendum: It should also note that the replacement of seals by signatures is not universal; for instance in Japan, seals are still used over signatures in the majority of cases.
As far as your visa is concerned, both, France and Germany are in the Schengen area, so a visa in one of those countries will give you access to both. As for as your work permit is concerned, at least in Germany you will need some participation of your new employer. They will have to prove that they can find nobody else in the EU. So they'll probably want you to sign the employment contract. As far as getting out of such a contract in Germany, you have to differentiate between a fixed-term contract (e.g. for 2 years) and an indefinite contract. Once you sign a fixed-term contract, it is difficult to get out of it before its normal end. Unlimited contracts in Germany usually come with a 6 month probation period, where both, the employer and employee can end the contract immediately. In this specific case you might be able to get out of the German contract. I don't know though if the employer would go through the trouble of obtaining a work permit for you without binding you for a fixed amount of time to them.
Based on Irish law, specifically the Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act 1956, can I live abroad after naturalizing as an Irish citizen and retain my citizenship just by filling that form? Yes, subject of course to factual disputes. The statute (as amended) provides that this revocation is not possible when the citizen has &quot;registered annually in the prescribed manner his name and a declaration of his intention to retain Irish citizenship with an Irish diplomatic mission or consular office or with the Minister&quot;: Revocation of certificates of naturalisation. 19.—(1) The Minister may revoke a certificate of naturalisation if he is satisfied— (a) that the issue of the certificate was procured by fraud, misrepresentation whether innocent or fraudulent, or concealment of material facts or circumstances, or (b) that the person to whom it was granted has, by any overt act, shown himself to have failed in his duty of fidelity to the nation and loyalty to the State, or (c) that (except in the case of a certificate of naturalisation which is issued to a person of Irish descent or associations) the person to whom it is granted has been ordinarily resident outside the State or, in the case of an application for a certificate of naturalisation granted under section 15A, resident outside the island of Ireland (otherwise than in the public service) for a continuous period of seven years and without reasonable excuse has not during that period registered annually in the prescribed manner his name and a declaration of his intention to retain Irish citizenship with an Irish diplomatic mission or consular office or with the Minister, or (d) that the person to whom it is granted is also, under the law of a country at war with the State, a citizen of that country, or (e) that the person to whom it is granted has by any voluntary act, other than marriage or entry into a civil partnership, acquired another citizenship. To be precise, filing this declaration does not protect the citizen from revocation of naturalization under another subsection of section 19(1). But if we assume that the annual declarations were all filed promptly (or that there is a reasonable excuse for any failure to file promptly), and that there is no dispute about this, then it is plain from the statutory text that the minister has no discretion to revoke the certificate of naturalization under 19(1)(c). If it were a country like UK or New Zealand, it would straightaway revoke citizenship by claiming misrepresentation of the intention to reside. This is not necessarily true. If there is a reason for the decision to leave, the naturalized citizen could seek to rebut any presumption that there had been misrepresentation. In the case of Ireland, filing the annual declaration does not protect the naturalized citizen from denaturalization under 19(1)(a), so even if the declarations are filed, it could be necessary to show evidence that there was a genuine intention to reside in Ireland at the time of naturalization, and that the intention changed subsequently. If that intention did not in fact exist, then the minister could assert that the certificate had been obtained by fraud, and if the naturalized citizen is unable to rebut that assertion, the minister could revoke the certificate under 19(1)(a). Also see Part IV of the statute for other ways in which Irish citizenship may be lost. In practice, I don't think it is presently very common for countries that generally tolerate (or explicitly permit) multiple nationalities, such as Ireland, the UK, and New Zealand, to seek to denaturalize their naturalized citizens who move abroad. Denaturalization seems to be largely confined to politically sensational cases such as those of terrorists. Since Ireland is a party to the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, one way to protect your Irish citizenship may be to renounce your other citizenship(s), if that is possible. However, I do not see any related provisions in the 1956 act linked above.
I don't believe GDPR makes a distinction between 'real life' and 'online'. It's all real life. You can tell anyone that they don't have consent to keep your personal data, but that doesn't mean they always have to delete it. There are six lawful bases for processing of personal data, so if an organisation is using and can justify one other than consent then they don't necessarily have to delete your data when they ask. The six bases are listed by the UK Information Commissioner's Office: (a) Consent: the individual has given clear consent for you to process their personal data for a specific purpose. (b) Contract: the processing is necessary for a contract you have with the individual, or because they have asked you to take specific steps before entering into a contract. (c) Legal obligation: the processing is necessary for you to comply with the law (not including contractual obligations). (d) Vital interests: the processing is necessary to protect someone’s life. (e) Public task: the processing is necessary for you to perform a task in the public interest or for your official functions, and the task or function has a clear basis in law. (f) Legitimate interests: the processing is necessary for your legitimate interests or the legitimate interests of a third party unless there is a good reason to protect the individual’s personal data which overrides those legitimate interests. (This cannot apply if you are a public authority processing data to perform your official tasks.) https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/lawful-basis-for-processing/#ib3
Is it actually necessary for businesses (such as a Small Town News USA Inc) that do not reside in EU to care about GDPR? Only if they offer goods/services to or monitor behavior of people in the EU (Art. 3(2)). Note that: having a commerce-oriented website that is accessible to EU residents does not by itself constitute offering goods or services in the EU. Rather, a business must show intent to draw EU customers, for example, by using a local language or currency. If it is then how (and by whom) would compliance be audited and/or enforced? Supervisory Authorities will care of it.
The Czech Consulate General in New York has a page about this. Presumably a similar situation would prevail at other Czech consulates, so this answer should help even if you do not reside in its territory. The page notes that if you are not &quot;a relative&quot; you can &quot;enclose an explanation letter why do you need the duplicate of the birth [or marriage] certificate.&quot; So it's possible that they'd give you a copy anyway, but, to increase your chances, you might want to include a letter explaining that you need the document to demonstrate your own Czech nationality. You can also include a copy of your birth certificate as evidence of your relationship. The page links to the forms you have to submit with the request for the certificate. They reflect the same possibility, slightly more specifically. The birth certificate application says 6. V případě, že nejste v tabulce, uveďte vztah k dítěti nebo jiný právní zájem: 6. In case you are not the person in a table, relation must be stated or any other legal interest: As far as I can tell &quot;the person in a table&quot; means &quot;a person in the list of birth certificates being requested with this form.&quot; That is, you don't need to explain yourself if you are the child whose birth certificate it is, nor if you are one of the parents shown on the certificate. The marriage certificate form similarly says 6. V případě, že nejste osobou uvedenou v tabulce, uveďte vztah k osobám nebo jiný právní zájem (If the applicant is not listed in the table below as the Husband or Wife, please provide an explanation of the relationship or legal interest which authorizes this submission.): This last sentence hints at the one thing that I unfortunately do not know, which is the criteria for judging whether a given explanation is legally sufficient to authorize the release of the certificate to the person who submitted the application. I guess your case is as good as it gets, but it's possible that the law prevents the certificates to be issued to you while your parents are still alive.