What documents are needed for an EU permanent resident to work in Germany?

Question

Assuming one is a permanent resident of an EU state other than Germany (e.g. Czech Republic), what documents are needed for them to work in Germany? The German Federal Office for Migration mentions that:

Residence permit for third-country nationals who have acquired the "permanent EC resident" title in another EU Member State

This residence permit will be granted to a third-country national who wishes to live in Germany for longer than three months

However it isn't clear if an EU resident can start working in Germany without any additional documents and then apply for a residency if deciding to stay for more than three months.

An equivalent Czech law mentions that it's possible to work without a visa if the person in question has been a permanent resident of the EU for more than 1 year. Unfortunately I don't know enough German to dig up the equivalent German law.

Answer 1

Wikipedia (in German) has an extensive discussion of this issue. Basically, the answer is no, you are not allowed to work before you get an authorisation from the Bundesagentur fur Arbeit and you might not even be allowed to stay in Germany unless you find a job that satisfies their requirements (highly qualified, etc.) or are able to show sufficient financial means to cover your needs.

There are two differences between long-term EC residents and other third-country nationals:

• Long-term residents don't need a visa before entering Germany and can complete all the formalities from within the country.
• If they satisfy the conditions, they have a right to a residence permit (i.e. no discretion or Ermessen on the part of the authorities). But that's a big "if", in particular the nature of the job you intend to take will be evaluated by the authorities before granting the authorisation.

This is all rooted in EU law, specifically directive 2003/109/EC, which does not require EU member states to let long-term residents in another member state work immediately and allows them to apply all the regular rules on labour market tests, language courses, etc. (cf. article 14).